


While you wait

by halfeatenmoon



Category: Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Comatose Finn, F/M, M/M, Not Episode IIV Compliant, Pining, Slow Burn, unrealistic medical coma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-12-09
Updated: 2018-01-12
Packaged: 2019-02-11 13:39:58
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 39,440
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12936453
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/halfeatenmoon/pseuds/halfeatenmoon
Summary: Poe and Rey wait for Finn to wake up. The problem is not so much that they're both in love with him; it's that Finn is still comatose after days, then weeks, and then months, and the war keeps going on around them.





	1. Apart

Poe and Rey first met in a quiet hospital ward.

By the time Rey walked in, Poe had already nodded off to sleep in a chair. He'd flown away from Starkiller on a whooping, cheering high, but by the time he reached D'Quar the high had faded and exhaustion was catching up to him. He was midway through his debrief report to the command room when someone handed General Organa a note; she nodded, then calmly told Poe what had happened to Finn and suggested they cut the debrief short.

Then he had Finn on a stretcher, and then running down the long stretch of corridor to the operating theatre, and then he was sitting in the corner of the room for hours while the doctors worked, with not enough bacta and not enough time to do this properly. When Finn was finally stable and transferred to a bed, Poe had run out of any reserves of energy to keep going. He took one look at Finn's peaceful, pain-free face, kissed him on the forehead, and fell asleep.

He woke to the low whirrs and clicks of medical droids, the muted sound of rebellious celebration outside, and soft footsteps across the floor. He opened his eyes when the footsteps stopped close by, and after blinking a few times he could clearly see the woman standing in front of him. Looking at him? No, looking past him. At Finn. Which is the moment that Poe realised he'd slumped over in his sleep and had been dozing with his arms flung over the bed and his head resting on his stomach. He hastily pushed himself back and scooted his chair out of Rey's way. She rushed forward immediately, falling into a crouch by the side of the bed. Poe watched as she touched Finn's face, ran her hands over his cheek, his neck, his chest, confident and familiar. It must be because Poe was so tired that he resented how easily she touched Finn. He was usually so good at sharing.

He was very tired, Poe told himself. And he'd just watched Finn get put back together. Of course he was going to be emotional. It didn't mean anything. Or maybe it did mean something, but now was the worst possible time to try to understand what it meant. He clenched his fists for a moment, took a deep breath, and then forced himself to let it go. That sense of resentment didn't quite go away; he still had the childish urge to remind Rey that he was here first. But he could keep it under control.

Rey finally stood up from where she'd been crouched over the bed, her hands trailing off Finn's body to hang at her sides. She looked around, a blank expression on her face, and Poe realised she was looking for somewhere to sit. It took a few moments for his brain to catch up and even think of where he'd last seen chairs, and a few more moments before he could drag his body upright and pull a second chair over. Rey collapsed into it like she hadn't sat down in days, and Poe did exactly the same.

"So what happened?" Rey asked, quietly.

"I thought I should ask you that," Poe said. "I heard you were there, is that right."

"Yes," Rey said, and then suddenly curled in on herself, her face in her hands. "Kylo Ren knocked me down for a moment and then Finn tried to fight him with a lightsaber and Ren got him and I didn't get up until Ren had... until he'd gone and slashed Finn, like..."

She'd curled in on herself, her voice getting muffled, and just like she'd gone from making Poe jealous to breaking his heart.

"Hey, is it okay if I touch you?" Poe asked. "I'll just rub your back. You look like you could use it, that's all."

Rey didn't say anything, but she nodded her head even with her face hidden. Poe just rubbed one hand gently over the back of her shoulders, and after a few minutes he could feel her relaxing just a little under his hands.

"It's okay to cry, you know."

"I don't. I just don't, normally."

She's so tired, Poe thought, and so young, and with none of his experience in getting through these kinds of nights and on to the next morning. "Well, you can now. It's pretty normal, after the kind of thing you've been through."

"It's just, I grew up in the desert," she said, between sobs. "It's a waste... Waste of water."

It was the saddest thing Poe had ever heard. "No shortage of water here," he said, his voice rough. "You can cry all you want."

Eventually he said "I'm Poe Dameron, by the way," and that made Rey laugh just a tiny bit, enough to finally get her to raise her head.

"I'm Rey," she said, with a sniff. "Just Rey."

"Fits with Finn," Poe said. "He's just Finn."

She rubbed at her face, still hunched over with her elbows propped on her knees. "He and BB-8 told me about you."

"And Finn told me about you." Poe took a deep breath. "You know, last time I saw Finn the only thing he cared about was saving you from the First Order. I don't think he'd regret anything he did."

"If I'd just gotten there sooner it wouldn't have happened," she mumbled. "It should have been me fighting Ren. I beat him, or I would have beaten him, and if I'd just done it sooner..."

Poe's tired brain was stuck now. What? "Hold up, you beat Kylo Ren?" Nobody mentioned that when he was in the command room. They must have not known yet, and all this time he was glued to the hospital watching what happened with Finn and he'd missed the news.

She shrugged, then nodded. "I didn't kill him though. I wanted to kill him." She balled her hands into fists, then hid her face again. "Like he tried to kill Finn. Stupid. I should have gotten there faster..."

"Hey, what did I say?"

"I know, I know." She sighed, and lifted her head. "At least Finn is alive, right?"

"Yeah, he's alive. He'll be okay. They had to put him under really deep, because of the pain, and because the surgery was going to be even more brutal because we don't have enough bacta right now."

"What's bacta?"

"What do you mean, what's... oh." Desert, Poe remembered. Jakku. Very isolated. "It's something that we use for healing in... in New Republic worlds. It's very powerful, and normally for injuries like this we'd put someone in a bacta tank, but we don't have enough, so..."

Rey nodded. "So, he's just... asleep."

"So that he's not in pain, yeah. He's drugged."

"When's he going to wake up?"

"We don't know." Poe admitted. "The doctors told me... well, he'd be in a lot of pain if they woke him up now, and they might have to go back in... cut his back open again to fix more of his nerve endings up."

It was a horrible idea to Poe and he shuddered just thinking about it, but Rey didn't seem too ruffled. "At least I got there in time to stop Kylo Ren from killing him. Not like with Han Solo."

It was the first time Poe realised he hadn't seen Solo around. They'd only met a few times, but Han was difficult to miss. He should be all over the Resistance base by now, grumbling about days gone by while pouring people drinks and urging them to celebrate. Three days ago, when Poe set off on the quest for Luke Skywalker, he thought bringing back Luke would bring Han back into the fold, too, and all their old heroes would lead them to victory again. And now Han is dead.

Then he remembered Leia.

"Oh no," he said, putting his head in his hands. "The General. I was just in the command room with her for an hour debriefing and she didn't mention... kriff, she didn't even know."

"She knew," Rey said. She didn't meet his eyes, staring at Finn's blanket instead, where it rose and fell with his breath. "I tried to tell her, but she already knew."

"She has a way like that." Poe gripped his hair in his hands, then forced his muscles to unclench and looked up again, thinking of all the times the General knew what was coming to them before it began. "She knows things, a lot. She knows about things before they happen, a lot of the time. I usually put it down to experience, with her having been in command for such a long time, but sometimes I think she must know the Force, too."

"She does," Rey said, without a doubt. "She must. She said she knew about Han the moment he died, and she would mourn later when she had more time. And when I stepped off the Falcon she was there to meet me and... and she just knew about me. We'd never met, but she knew."

Poe could tell there was something he was missing here, but he was too tired to connect the dots himself. "Knew what?"

Rey shrugged and rolled her eyes. Then she let out a breath and finally turned to look at him, properly, with a wry half-smile on her lips. "That I'm a Jedi."

For the second time in this conversation, Poe's brain ground to a halt. Rey was a Jedi? How had nobody mentioned this? How was there another Jedi out there and nobody knew, and Poe had to meet her in a hospital room and he'd started this whole meeting being jealous. He'd feel embarrassed about being rumpled and sweat-stained, about the crease in his cheek where it had been lying on the blankets, but she looked almost as filthy as he was.

"You're a Jedi," he repeated, feeling slow. "You... you've trained? Do you know Luke Skywalker?"

"I didn't know Luke Skywalker was real until all this started," Rey said, frustrated. "I thought he was a myth!"

"Then... wait, then how do you know you're a Jedi?"

Rey reached for the hem of her tunic and for a moment Poe thought he'd have to avert his eyes, but she was just displaying the lightsaber holstered at her hip. "I didn't always have it," she said, seeing his confusion. "I didn't know I could do any of this until I left Jakku. I found this because it was calling to me, and then when the First Order captured me..." She closed her eyes and swallowed.

"We don't always know what we can do until we have to do it," Poe said.

"Yes," she said, opening her eyes again. "I didn't know I was anything special until I found BB-8, and now..."

She looked back at Finn.

"It's a lot, I know. I can't even imagine it," Poe said, truthfully. "I've always travelled. I can't imagine living my whole life on one planet and what it would be like to leave. And to leave for the kind of danger you've seen since."

"And it's not stopping." Rey sighed, and with what looked like great reluctance, she got to her feet. "I'm only stopping in to see Finn. Chewbacca and I are taking off in the morning, to try to find Luke."

"Are you going to bring him back?"

"I hope so. I don't know what I'm supposed to say to make someone like that make him change his mind. I just know I have to try. And if he won't come with me, at least he can train me so that next time I fight Kylo Ren, he won't have a chance to run away."

No wonder Finn was ready to cross the galaxy to save her, Poe thought. Rey was a force of nature the likes of which he could only compare to... well, the General. If anyone could bring Luke Skywalker back, or learn to take down Kylo Ren in combat, it was going to be her.

She leaned in to kiss Finn's forehead, and for a moment Poe felt a twist in his chest at the thought that she was kissing the exact same spot that he had kissed not an hour before. Then she looked at Poe and held out a hand to shake.

"It was nice to meet you, Poe Dameron," she said, with the smallest smile, all that she could muster. "I can see why Finn and BB-8 like you so much."

"It's a pleasure to meet you too. I hope it's not too long until we meet again."

Rey nodded once, sharply, and strode towards the door. Poe turned to watch her go, and at the last moment, he opened his mouth. He meant to say 'May the Force be with you', but instead what came out was "Are you okay?"

She stopped, suddenly, and looked back over her shoulder. "Why do people keep asking me that, here?"

"Because we want to know," Poe said, before he could stop himself. "Because if you're not okay, we want to help. It means you can ask us for help."

She paused. "Even though tomorrow I'm going to be light-years away?"

"We have long-distance holo-calls."

"Okay." Rey nodded, turned, and hesitated again. "I'm okay, though."

"Good," Poe said. "If that ever changes, I'll be here."

She nodded once more and swept away without a word. And then, finally, Poe leaned forward, buried his head in Finn's blankets again and drifted off into sleep.

 

There was a sound in the room, a rustling of sheets, and Poe woke briefly from his light sleep. For a second he thought maybe it was Finn moving, and Poe should see if he needs anything. It was dark, though, and it took a moment for him to see anything; when his eyes adjusted to the darkness, he realised it's a doctor leaning over Finn's bed, checking something. She looked back at Poe and nodded, briefly. He can't muster up the energy to do anything but drift back to sleep.

  
  


The next time he wakes, it's much more reluctantly, with the muggy awareness that someone has pulled him to his feet.

"I can't carry him on my own," a voice said, near his ear.

"I don't think we can carry him between us," said another. Jess, Poe thought, belatedly. And Snap, Snap was at his side already, an arm around Poe's waist, holding him up. Poe tried to straighten his legs and stand on his own, stumbled, and then Jess was under his other arm, holding him up.

"Can walk," Poe said, muzzily. He managed to force one eye open to glare at Jess, but his head was already slowly drooping.

"Sure you can," Jess agreed, "But we can help."

He drifted in and out of awareness as they walked him to his bunk. He didn't want to move, it was too hard, and he didn't really feel ready to leave anyway. But he was also too tired to argue back or try to do anything else. By the time his head hit the pillow, he was already asleep again.

  
  


When Poe woke again, it was from a deep, dreamless sleep, and he had no idea how long he'd been out. From the light coming through the window, it was the middle of the day; he didn't know which day. His most recent memories came back to him gradually. A jolt of fear, and then relief, when he realised he wasn't waking up on the Finalizer in captivity. Even greater relief, and pride, when he remembered that yesterday he blew up an entire First Order base. He can remember falling asleep next to Finn, and much more fuzzily, someone walking him to bed.

Sadness, when he remembered Finn unconscious in the med bay. Excitement that maybe Finn would be awake today and they could finally talk without the haste of impending battle.

Poe swung his legs out of the bunk immediately, and was met with BB-8's quizzical beep.

"Yeah, I'm fine," he said, rubbing a hand over his eyes. "Do I have anywhere I have to be this morning?"

BB-8 dutifully relayed a list of scheduled activity. Extended planning sessions with the rest of senior command later that afternoon. Flight drills suspended for the day - good, because Poe would have given that order if somebody hadn't already done it for him. But it was nearly midday now, and he didn't have to be anywhere for hours.

He was almost out the door, ready to bolt for the medical wing, when he caught sight of himself in the mirror. Unshaven, his hair greasy, clothes rumpled. He was suddenly aware that he hadn't washed since before he got in the cockpit nearly two days ago, and the sweat and stink of battle was still all over him.

Poe wanted to go and lay eyes on Finn so badly, but he couldn't help remembering the number of times his newer pilots had tried to overwork themselves, and how he always told them to stop.

"Take care of the body the way you would your ship," he said to himself, grudgingly, and stomped into the shower as BB-8 whistled approvingly. He zoned out while he was washing, too, the white noise of it lulling him into a trance, and he had to shake himself out of it. He was clearly still pretty exhausted, and washing off the grime seemed to just bring his weariness to the surface.

[now, food!] said BB-8, the moment he stepped out of the fresher.

"No, now I'm going to see Finn," Poe replied, stifling a yawn.

[finn! finn!] BB-8 echoed, excitedly, spinning around Poe as he tried to step through the doorway. [but poe still needs to eat first]

Poe sighed. "You're not the boss of me, you know."

[humans operating at suboptimal preparedness need additional command input] BB-8 replied, nudging Poe's legs towards the mess hall.

"Fine." Poe would have liked to avoid the noise and conversation of the mess hall for longer, but he couldn't put it off forever. When he thought about it, he really should check in with his squad. "I'm going past the medical bay though."

  
  


Finn was still asleep. Poe didn't sit down at his bedside this time - he knew he had responsibilities, and he had to eat, and if he sat down it would just be all the harder to get up. He watched for a few minutes, following the rise and fall of Finn's chest just like he had yesterday, comforting himself with the knowledge that he was still stable and still at peace. Doctor Kalonia wandered over at one point and asked if Poe wanted to talk, but he shook his head. Time for that later. He just gave himself a few minutes, kissed Finn's forehead again and turned suddenly away before he could get distracted again.

  
  


The sunrise on Ach-to is brilliant. It's brilliant whether Rey watches it from down on the waterline, sitting beneath the Falcon with R2 by her side, or whether she watches it from the very top of the tall, rocky island. That's where she is today, watching the black sky begin to glow. It starts with a diffuse band of grey along the smooth ocean, making a silhouette of the horizon. Then one point of the glowing horizon line starts to swell, a thicker, brighter light that Rey finds herself turning towards, whether she means to or not, so that it's in the centre of her vision. Shades of blue start to spread out into the black, the light radiating out again and again as each spot moves through a different hue. Then finally the first sight of the burning orange sun appears over the horizon and sets the whole sea ablaze.

This is the third day on which Rey has been on Ach-to to watch the sunrise. It's as beautiful as the first time, but she didn't expect to be here for this long. She's starting to grow impatient.

She looked over at the door to Luke's hut, still firmly shut. The first day she was here, he rose at dawn and frowned to see her waiting outside. Maybe now he was avoiding her by staying in bed. No matter. Rey could wait. She turned so that the sun was at her back, warming her, and she was mostly facing the door. She hadn't intended to stake out the last remaining Jedi, but if that was what it took then that was what she was going to do. General Organa had asked her to bring Luke back, and she was going to do it.

I'm here for a reason, she told herself, staring at the door. I'm here for the Resistance. I'm here for...

And this was the point where she couldn't keep going, because she couldn't say she was here for Finn. Finn wasn't a Jedi, and he'd never been after Luke. He just wanted to have a life that was free, and the last time Rey had seen him he'd been unconscious. She wanted to talk to him more than anything. She thought she'd be back there by now. It wasn't supposed to take this long.

She picked up a twig and crushed it in her hand, trying to settle herself and convince herself to stay. Then she plucked some blades of grass and stripped them, angrily but methodically. After fifteen minutes she settled herself on the ground and tried to calm down again, as if this was just another day in the desert, another day biding time waiting for someone to come and get her. It might take a long time, she always knew, but you'd never find out if you didn't wait, and take care of yourself in the meantime.

Rey closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Then another. And then she decided.

"Luke!" she yelled, hammering on his door. "I know you're awake. I need you to listen. I can't wait around for you forever. You come with me today, or I leave without you."

There was silence; it was too quiet, compared to the background noise Rey could hear before she knocked.

"I'm not going away," she added, after a minute of listening for the slightest sound from behind the door.

Then there was a shuffling sound, and Luke finally emerged to say "Don't go."

"I have to," Rey said, impatiently. "I came here. I tried to get you to come out of hiding. Clearly that's  not going to work. Well there's a war on, and I want to get back to my friends."

He raised his eyebrows and looked at her, thoughtfully. "You think of your friends often?"

"Of course."

"And they need you."

Rey was less certain of that, but she still felt confident enough to nod.

"Do you ever have visions of them?"

Rey was trying to hold his gaze, but she swallowed, hard, remembering everything she'd seen when she first laid hands on the lightsaber.

"You do," Luke said, softly.

"No. I don't have visions of my friends. Other things." Rey rubbed at her arms, cold, suddenly, despite the warm sun. "Why?"

Luke didn't answer. He said, "Instead of leaving, why don't you stay and train with me a while?"

"No. If you want to train me, come with me back to the Ilenium system."

"I can't."

"Then I'm leaving."

Then Luke's tired, distant facade broke down all at once, and Rey could hear the years of loneliness and desperation in his voice when he said "Please."

Rey felt the tug back to D'Qar like a physical thing inside her. She'd felt this before, the moment she realised that she and Finn couldn't go straight back to Jakku. It was like a magnet that kept her turning back to that direction, but where it used to point to Niima spaceport, it now pulled her back towards Finn. And yet, she came here on a mission. If it took longer than she expected, perhaps that was something he had to live with.

"Why do you want this so badly?"

Luke took a deep breath. "I don't want to go back out into the galaxy again. It's been too long. I'm not ready. But I can't..." he paused. "You're here, and you're powerful, and that means I have a responsibility to train you."

"How do you know? I've beaten Kylo Ren once already. Maybe I'll be just fine on my own."

There, Luke smiled. "Well done."

Rey blinked at him. She'd expected an argument. "Thank you."

"I guess it wasn't too hard to find a crack in his armour, right?" Luke raised his eyebrows, and Rey could even make out the beginnings of a smile behind his beard. "Kylo Ren has many weaknesses. He holds them close to his chest, although he's not as good at hiding them as he thinks he is. So I imagine you found one."

"You... could say that." Rey frowned. "He might be better at hiding than you know, though. It's been a long time since you saw him."

"It has, you're right. I once thought I knew him, and I was wrong, so I'm not the best judge of character, either. But I'm fairly certain that I'm right when I say that Kylo Ren is not very good at knowing when he needs to change." He leaned against the doorframe. "He is, however, very well trained. He's been learning how to use his powers for twenty years. I don't know how long you've been practicing or what you've taught yourself, but from what I've seen of you, I don't think you have nearly as much experience."

Rey crossed her arms defensively. "How would you even know? You've barely asked me about myself. And... I don't think you were in my head."

She shivered, suddenly. She hoped he hadn't been reading her mind the way Ren had. She'd know what that felt like, though, right? It was unmissable when Ren did it. But Luke knew more than either of them, and maybe...

"I haven't read your mind," Luke said, gently. "And I promise I won't. But when you know the Force the way I do, you just sort of..." he waved his arm about vaguely. "You can just tell some things."

Rey hissed a breath out through her teeth. "Two weeks. If I train with you for two weeks, then will you come back to D'Qar and continue training me there?"

"I promise I'll try," Luke said, and that would have to be enough for now.

  
  
  


It's the fourth day since the destruction of Starkiller base, and Finn is still unconscious.

Poe knows it's the fourth day because his years of military training have taught him to be aware of the time. If not for that, he'd have a hard time remembering; the days just bled together. On the first day he woke up, peered at Finn in the medical bay, then went to the mess hall for food and to laugh with the rest of his crew like normal. Went back to the medical bay to sit by Finn, hold his hand for a moment. Gathered his team, said they were skipping any planned exercises today but encouraged them to check on their ships and their droids, if they had any, do some routine maintenance. Optional, of course, but maintenance could keep you in touch with the job while giving it time to rest, too.

He tried to follow his own example and put in some good work on his X-wing. Instead he found himself rushing through it, doing the bare minimum of safety checks and cleaning before he scrubbed his hands and found his way back to Finn's bedside.

"Sorry I haven't been around," he said to Finn. "You know how it is. Hey, you probably really do know, being a soldier. I guess they made you clean your own armour, right? To keep it that bright white all the time."

 

He felt slightly silly talking, but he had to do something while he sat there with Finn. He didn't want to talk about Starkiller or the First Order or how the Resistance was progressing; he'd just have to repeat it once Finn woke up, and thinking about it made Poe realise that he had very little idea what would happen next, either. So he talked about his X-Wing and the maintenance he still had left to do until he ran out of words. Then he just sat there, thinking about Finn's hand in his, until the rising sound of voices and footsteps in the hallway told him it was mealtime again.

 

On the second day it was time for the dreaded full debrief from the last big battle. It started just after sunrise, and Poe had to choose between eating breakfast and seeing Finn, with no time for either. He tried to compromise by going to breakfast and walking by the med bay on his way back, but time is short already and he really didn't want to keep the General waiting. He feels a pull back towards Finn, though, as he walks towards the command room, like something is calling him back.

The meeting is long and brutal. Poe reports on each of the casualties from the X-wing corps, something he was too adrenaline-high to focus on during the battle and too Finn-obsessed to think about since they landed. While it was a decisive victory, their knowledge about the remainder of the First Order is next to nothing. Their naval resources, their human resources - they can't even be certain whether Kylo Ren survived.

Planning their next move isn't going much better. Aside from the impossibility of planning to fight an enemy when they don't know their strength, their political situation has completely changed with the destruction of the Hosnian system. General Organa looked as fine and strong as ever, but from the sheer amount of political negotiation she already had to report, Poe couldn't imagine when she had time to sleep.

"At least we know how to find Luke," she said, at the end of an hour-long rundown of the New Republic's disaster conventions and how far she'd gotten towards putting them into action.

"No report from Rey so far, ma'am," said Axar from communications. "We'll alert you as soon as we get a signal."

"It's very distant, and opportunities to communicate over that distance may be scarce."

"I'm sure that's why he chose it. Oh, I know," the General said, with a tired flick of her hand. "He went there to find the original Jedi temple, and I'm sure that's true, but it's hardly all there is to it. When my brother does something, he does it thoroughly, and that includes banishing himself."

"But Rey's going to bring him back," Poe added.

"Yes," the General said, with a tired smile. "I have no doubt about that."

Poe didn't doubt it, either. Ten minutes in a room with her had been enough to convince him that Rey was able to do anything she damn well wanted. The problem was more that exciting as it was to think that soon they'd be sharing their space with Legendary Hero Luke Skywalker, Poe wasn't sure that would solve anything.

It was still daylight by the time the meeting was over, but Poe found himself almost sleepwalking with exhaustion. He had run out of brain, and all he was ready to do was sleep. It wasn't until he was staring into the med bay window that he realised he hadn't sleep-walked himself to bed. But of course he didn't go straight to bed - he wouldn't want to skip to check whether Finn was awake yet.

Finn was still unconscious, as it turned out. Poe only meant to sit down for a moment, but he soon fell asleep with his head on Finn's covers again, and his head full of thoughts about how to plan your next move around  man who'd been missing for a decade.

 

"Focus," Luke said. "To use the Force, first you have to feel it. To feel it, you have to practice how to listen. That means calming yourself, putting thoughts of the past and the future aside, and focusing on what you feel all around you, in this moment."

Rey did exactly as he said. She closed her eyes, calmed her breath, settled her body into position. She calmed her mind to nothing, and turned it to what she could feel. And once again, she thought about Finn.

She tries to turn her mind back to the Force, every single time, but she can't focus for long before she's drifting away again, thinking of where Finn is and how he's doing. She pictures him awake and laughing with Poe, and unconscious and still in that hospital bed, and she doesn't know which one is real. And she keeps trying, because she doesn't want Luke to think that she's hopeless at this and send her away. But she's not very good at keeping her emotions off her face. When she opened her eyes, the first thing she saw was Luke's face, and showing that he knows just how bad she is at keeping her mind on the Force.

"I'm trying," she said, before he could get a word in. "I am really, really trying, but I don't know what's happening to him and I'm just sitting here."

"I know," Luke said. She wasn't entirely sure that he was smiling - not growing up with many other humans, Rey wasn't all that used to people with beards - but his eyes seemed kind. "It's very difficult, at first. I know how hard it is to do when you're worried about your friends, far away somewhere else. I know better than you can probably imagine."

"How do I get better at it, then?"

"It sounds strange, I'm sure, but it might help if you stopped trying so hard."

"How would that help?"

Luke sometimes took a long time to answer questions. Rey thought it was probably because he'd spent so much time alone, and he wasn't used to having somebody waiting while he tried to come up with an answer. R2-D2 thought it was because Luke had become "a cryptic arse", but he always beeped it out with a lot of affection.

"The Jedi used to think that attachment was a weakness," Luke said, at last. "They thought being too attached to others was what led to the Dark Side. Yoda taught me that it was because we love that we feel fear, and that is what eventually leads people down the darker path."

"So it's wrong for me to keep thinking about Finn," Rey said, feeling sick. "Do you think that just because I care about Finn, I'm going to turn into a murderer like Kylo Ren? Because I would never."

"No. The Jedi were wrong," Luke said, in the tone that said the conversation was over. "Now, calm yourself and sit. Focus on where you are, but don't fight so hard. Everything is one with the Force; it comes and it goes, and it's still the same. Focus on where you are, right now."

Rey did. It was harder this time than ever before. She thought of Finn in the desert, asking her whether she was okay. Finn trying to run. Finn coming back. And Kylo Ren slashing Finn's back the moment it was turned.

If attachment was the way to the Dark Side, she thought, then it wasn't the road that Kylo Ren had taken. He seemed to be attached to nothing, caring about nothing. He'd murdered his father right in front of them to try to set himself free of anything. Love didn't seem to be Ren's path to the dark side, and abandoning what he loved didn't make him any lighter. And yet he was still full of anger, and passion. When they fought, Kylo Ren was a sheer force of uncontained fury. Now that she'd met Luke, it was hard to believe Luke had ever trained him. Luke like the hull of a ship in a sandstorm.

Luke said the Jedi were wrong, but he didn't say why. So she let her mind go, like he said, tried not to worry when she turned back to thinking of Finn again and again. She saw Finn writhing in pain, more vividly than ever before, and she saw him laughing and happy with Poe. Two visions of his future, and she didn't know which was true. Finn happy, or Finn in pain. Two images of Finn falling asleep again, one exhausted by pain and the other at peace in Poe's arms. And then, she remembered Finn running to her. Finn coming back, again and again and again.

That was when she started to really hear the sound of the ocean against the cliffs, and the birds crying as they wheeled overhead, and how she was battered by cold wind and warm sun at the same time. And then she started to feel something. The beginning of something. Something huge and complicated and overwhelming, too much for her mind. She'd felt it twice before; once when she'd fought Kylo Ren, and channelled all of that terrifying might into tearing him down. And the first time she'd sat down and trained with Luke, when it was all too much and her mind shied away from it, like she was shielding her eyes from the sun. This time she tried to let it just be there, to just feel it, instead of running away. It was big, but there was something in there she knew, something familiar. She couldn't take in all of the Force, but she could follow that one thread that she knew, and hold into it, feel it tracing all the way across the galaxy to a planet swarming with green.

When Rey finally opened her eyes again, after sitting for what felt like five minutes and two hours at the same time, and found Luke really smiling back at her. Proud.

"Was that it?" Rey asked, uncertainly. "Did I get it right?"

"It's not as simple as doing it right or wrong, so only you can answer that," Luke said, which was a cop-out if ever Rey heard one. "What do you feel?"

Rey started to say something, then stopped herself. She tried several more times before she looked away, and just gave an expressive shrug. "I don't know. I saw a lot of things, and then it went away, and I was just thinking about here. Except I felt... I don't know if this is how it's meant to work."

"If there's one thing the Jedi always had wrong, it was the idea that there's only one way to reach the Force," Luke said, dryly. "What was it?"

"It's like instead of thinking about Finn, I could think about other things, and where I was, and I could finally focus... but it's because it's like I could feel him, too."

Luke nodded. His face was blank, not judging or approving, just listening. He was remarkably calm, Rey thought, for a man who was constantly having hair blown in his face by the wind. Then she realised that she had stray strands of hair whipping at her face, too, and the wind was blowing stinging grains of sand against her skin, and she'd barely noticed it at all. Huh.

"What do you mean, when you say you can feel him?"

"I don't know. Just like... I can tell he's still there."

Luke nodded, and smiled again. "Okay."

"Okay?"

"There are lots of ways to the Force." He tilted his head. "When I pushed back against what Yoda taught me, and I thought caring about people was a strength and not a weakness, I didn't mean it precisely like this."

"What would Yoda think?"

He laughed. "You'd make Yoda very nervous."

She wanted to ask Does that mean I'm doing it right? But Luke said there was no right way to the Force. Instead, she said "I think I learned something new this time. I think I learned how to reach the Force. I really know how to do it now!"

Luke smiled. "You did it before."

"I've never done it on purpose before." Rey had been sitting calmly, but she leapt up now, looking around, thrumming with excitement. "I found the Force! What happens next, Luke? What do I do now?"

"You practice," Luke said, sounding far too smug for a supposedly wise and enlightened Jedi master. "You do it again."

 

Jessika Pava came to the Resistance pretty young, and at first she thought things would be different to regular military life. A resistance group, a breakaway - surely they'd be less regimented and more free-wheeling, more free time and more leeway to do what you wanted. In every other respect, she loved the Resistance and it was everything she hoped it would be. In this respect, though, she was completely wrong.

Military life is very routine, even in the Resistance. You get up by the appointed time. You eat with the rest of your crew. You're at training or drills right on schedule, executing every command just as worded, even if Commander Dameron does let his squadron loose as they get close to lunchtime and they're allowed to practice some loops and tricks just for fun. You eat again. You train again. You eat again. You get some time to yourself in the evenings. The Resistance was a better crowd than the Republic military, for sure, and Jess didn't want to be anywhere else. But it was, nonetheless, a space where life was very routine, predictable and boring, with nearly every minute of your day accounted for. Except, of course, when you were under attack from someone.

This is why Jess noticed, and why she was fairly impressed, that Poe had managed to alter his very regimented military routine to include several hours a day in the medical wing.

If it were anyone else in his position, Poe would be telling them that this wasn't really love. He's had this conversation before; it was a relatively common warning he'd given to people in the Republic military, and even more so in the Resistance where they were under more intense pressure. The feelings you had for your comrades when you trained together, ate together, fought together - they were powerful, profound. But you had to be careful not to mistake them for love.

It was not love to feel so drawn to someone who had been with you during your captivity, who had helped you escape, who you thought was gone and then found again during one of the most terrifying weeks of your life. It was not love to attach all these feelings of longing and desire, to imagine this connection, with someone who didn't and couldn't respond. If it were anyone else, Poe would have said exactly that.

He tried to tell himself those things now, but it came out as not _necessarily_ love.

He knows exactly what he sounds like when Jessika sits him down and asks what's going on with this whole bedside vigil thing he's doing. He doesn't want to talk about it.

"He saved me. I owe him a lot."

"I know," Jess said. "That's not really an explanation for spending this much time in here, though. You can't pay back a debt while someone's unconscious."

"He doesn't have anyone else."

"I know. But he probably can't feel lonely when he's not even awake."

"I..."

But Poe couldn't think of the next explanation, or at least the one that didn't end with 'I love him'. Whatever Jess asked him, he couldn't say that. He knows it's not true. Or it's not _supposed_ to be true, even if it feels like it couldn't be anything else. He clenched his hand where it was lying on Finn's sheets instead, bunching the fabric up in his fist. Jess patiently covered his hand with hers and pulled it back to rest on his knee.

"The thing is," she said, "When you're spending all this time hanging around someone who doesn't know you're here and can't give you anything back, I think it's more about you than it is about Finn."

Poe struggled with that. Jess hadn't seen how scared Finn was on the Finaliser, and the way he'd stepped up to help Poe anyway. And she hadn't seen how desperate Finn had been to get Rey back, the one other person in the whole universe that he knew he could count on. She didn't know any of that and surely, Poe wanted to say, surely if you just knew that you'd see that I have to be here by his side.  

But Finn couldn't feel anything now, and couldn't think anything, and until he woke up, it wouldn't make a difference to him whether Poe there every free moment he had.

"I know," Poe said, at last, and sagged in his chair, like the admission had cut his strings and taken all the fight out of him. "Yeah, I know."

"I'm not saying don't come here," Jess added. "Just don't waste your life, you know?"

"Yeah, I know." Poe rubbed his forehead. "I just really want to be here when he wakes up."

"I know," Jess agreed, "But we don't know when that's going to be, and other people need you, too."

"Okay," Poe said. "Yeah. You're right. Okay."

He took a deep breath and stood up, then looked towards the door.

"Okay, but I don't actually know what to do now."

Jess laughed and put an arm through his. "Come and see your crew, for one. Have a drink. Tell everyone the story of how you sassed Kylo Ren, because hardly anyone has heard that story yet and it's a damn tragedy."

"I guess," Poe said. Normally that would be a pretty enticing prospect, telling a story that got better every time as he got more and more practice at telling it, so that eventually it would be part of Resistance legend and lore. He'd been waiting for Finn to wake up for eight days now, and he didn't feel that enthusiastic about going and talking to anyone else.

"Or you can tell them about Finn," Jess said, dryly, "And tell everyone how brave and heroic he was, and how romantic it was when he pulled you into a closet and took of his helmet, and how badly you want to kiss his big defecting face..."

Poe tried to pull away from her in horror, but she held firmly onto his arm.

"Oh, no you don't. I know what you think about love on the battlefield, and I always thought you were wrong."

"Oh yeah? How'd that work out for you?" Poe muttered. He'd only been around for one of Jess's inter-squad relationship mishaps, but he knew she'd been through a couple of these brief-but-intense romances before he joined the Resistance.

"So things didn't work out. Big deal. That can happen to anyone. It doesn't mean Kare and I didn't love each other. Or me and Dylyn, or me and Pertrix, or me and Snipples..."

"I don't even know who that is!"

"I'm saying, who cares if you're in love with him?"

"It's crazy," Poe hissed. "I knew him for a day. We escaped and crashed a ship and then I got to see him for about an hour again before we had to split up for a battle and now he's unconscious for... I don't know. For a long time. It's crazy."

"Doesn't mean you don't love him." She bumped his shoulder. "I mean, you love him, you don't, you don't have to tell me. Whatever. I'm just saying it's fine. But you can't do anything about it while he's out, you don't even know what he thinks of it, so don't spend all your time waiting for him. What's the worst that can happen if you spend some time with people who are conscious for a change?"

_I might forget about him_ , Poe thought. _I might fall in love with someone else._ But he knew the answer to that already, knew exactly what he'd tell anyone else in his position right now. If you fall in love with someone else instead of waiting forever for someone who can't respond, that's just moving on. To anyone else, he'd say it was the healthiest thing to do.

 

Rey's life on Ach-to wasn't as strictly regimented as the Resistance on D'Qar, but she still had routine. Luke didn't dictate what she did with her time; he just told her to come to him in the morning when she was ready to begin, and he told her when he was done. For the first few days she delighted in the freedom, to learn and eat and sleep whenever she wanted. There were no monsters about to eat her if she grew tired before sundown, and once Luke showed her how to fish on the first day, there was always plenty of food. It was delightful, at first, to eat whenever she wanted, without having to ration her food to keep from getting hungry and weak at the wrong time of day.

She was uneasy, though, and she realised that it didn't sit right with her to just let her feelings dictate when she ate and when she worked. On Jakku, routine was survival. She had to wake at the right time so that she could scavenge, trade, and get back to shelter by nightfall. She had to eat at the right times to have enough food to keep her going until her next visit to Niima for rations. Routine and habit were what had kept her alive for this long, and abandoning them kept her looking over her shoulder, expecting an enemy to catch her off guard.

So Rey made herself a new routine, one that was just for now. She woke at dawn, ate a light meal, then walked to Luke's house and sat outside his door until he reluctantly stepped outside to begin her training. Then she would work with him for as long as he was willing - sometimes all day, sometimes only an hour - and keep working at the exercises herself once he'd gone back inside. And twice a day, after lunch and before she slept, she would go down to the Falcon and try to make contact with the Resistance on D'Qar.

Getting a message through this part of space was not easy. Rey could fly a ship and repair almost anything, but she didn't know how to tune a receiver to pick up anything in the depths of the Outer Rim, especially when she had no way of knowing when a repeater was going to come into range. She'd never had a transmitter before, and never had a chance to practice. She understood, now, why Poe had come to Jakku for the hidden, dangerous, sought-after plans instead of having old man Tekka just call him. But twice a day she tried, and moved the tuners through one frequency range after another, listening closely to the rise and fall of static the way she listened to to the growl of an engine, or the slow groaning of a piece of machinery as she tried to prise it from its home.

Ten days into her stay, late in the evening, she heard a voice. She didn't know who it was, and could barely make out what they were saying, but she lunged for the microphone like her life depended on it.

"Hello!" she said, shouting in her excitement. Chewbacca put a restraining hand on her shoulder, and she swallowed and tried to lower her voice just a little. "Hello, this is the Millennium Falcon. Who's this? I mean, who's receiving? Do you copy? I mean..."

"This is the Deep Serpent, I'm copilot Dia Laan," said the voice in response, firm and calm. "What's your message?"

"I'm trying to reach D'Qar! Do you know it? Or do you know how I can get a transmission through?"

"I can send on a message to D'Qar," Dia Laan said. The voice dropped in volume for a moment in the middle; it still wasn't the strongest connection. "What's your message?"

Chewbacca growled before Rey could respond, and switched the transmitting button to 'off'.

"What? They were going to take a message! We could tell them I found Luke, maybe they can bring something back about what happened with Finn..."

Chewie growled again in response. Rey was picking up some Shryiiwook, but it still took her a moment to get the gist of what he was saying.

"Oh. It's not safe as in... we can't trust them with a message?" She chewed her lip. "I guess you've never heard of the pilot or the ship before, huh?"

Chewie shook his head. That, at least, was a simple answer.

Rey tapped her fingers on the console for a moment, thinking, and then switched the transmitter back on. "Copilot Dia Laan, are you still there?"

"Yes, but not for long. I don't know your exact location, but by my estimation we'll only be in your range for another seven minutes."

"Okay. I can't give a message to you directly, but can you relay my signal to these co-ordinates?"

"Sure thing," Dia Laan agreed, easily. Probably not a spy, then? But that wasn't a chance they could take. "Stand by for relay."

They had to wait, still, for the transmission to get through. Rey watched the minutes tick past, knowing that she only had a tiny window to keep the Deep Serpent in range and that every moment that passed was one that she wasn't talking to the Resistance. Just before the four minute mark, there was a crackle and a toneless voice saying "we're receiving. Please identify."

"Millennium Falcon."

"Andor Risen," the voice said, just as calmly, in another code word. "Please state your contact code."

Rey rushed through the digits they'd given her when she left, worried she'd forget one and waste the last of her time. But after an excruciating pause, the voice was back, this time warm and excited. "Rey, right? It's so good to hear from you. What's your report?"

"I don't have much time. Can I speak to the General?"

"Sorry, can't allow it. But you can ask and report here. What's your status?"

"Uh, good. We're good. We made it here to… to the destination." No names, no names, you don't know who's listening, she reminded herself. "The target is here but... difficult to access."

"Thank you. Is that your full report?"

"No time for more, I'm about to lose range. What about... uh..." Kriff, they hadn't agreed on a code word for Finn. "My friend, you know, the one who... is he..."

There was a scrambling sound and then a hurried, familiar voice on the other end. Not the General, but Poe. "Rey! Rey, he's still here, he's alive, he's just -"

That was when the transmission cut out completely. Rey sat frozen, her hand still pressing down the button as if holding it could make the radio signal come back.

Chewbacca stretched and yawned, loudly, shaking her out of her trance.

"Okay, yeah. That was good news." Rey sighed. "Pretty much good news. I guess we just keep trying and hope we catch a ship again some time. Do you think R2 would be able to monitor the airwaves while I'm training, in case another ship comes in range then?"

Chewbacca just grunted. Rey squinted at him. "That's not very helpful."

He shrugged.

"Oh well, I guess I can only ask, right?" R2 had been pretty grumpy about being on Ach'to so far - it wanted to spend all its time with Luke but all the stairs were hell to navigate with wheels.

Rey stood up to go, and tried to walk briskly out the door as if this had just been another day's business and not the briefest contact with Poe, the slightest bit of news about Finn, that she'd heard in ten days of wondering how Finn was doing. And she didn't even know what it meant. Chewbacca slung an arm over her shoulder as she tried to pass through the cockpit, though, and she found herself in an awkward hug.

She didn't understand all that much Shryiiwook yet, but Rey thought she got the gist of what he was saying.

"I know if I got through once, I can get through again," Rey said, hugging him back. "I just wish I knew when."

  
  


On the other side of the galaxy, Poe was panting, staring at a blank screen where a moment ago there had been co-ordinates and frequencies, a Millennium Falcon signature. He was lucky he'd been at the right end of base when Rey's first message came through, and even then he'd had to run to get there at all. He knew there hadn't been much time and he had to keep it short, but even what they had wasn't enough time to say what he wanted to.

"Damn it," he said, and smacked a hand down hard on the console. It felt like a rookie, hothead outburst, something a decades-younger Poe Dameron would have done.

The General was seated by the central meeting table, going over some notes. Her eyes drifted over to him, and she made a laconic gesture to beckon him over. He tried to compose himself as he crossed the short distance from the wall panel to the centre of the room, and gave a sharp nod of respect. By the time he took a seat next to Leia, he was the picture of restraint, and it didn't change her expression at all.

"You wanted more time to talk to Rey," she said, calmly.

"Yes. You didn't?"

"Of course I did." She didn't roll her eyes, but they crinkled a little at the edges. "But she said she didn't have much time, and with having to conceal what's going on as much as we can, it was best to leave it to the person on duty rather than having me jump in."

"Are you saying I shouldn't have?"

The look she gave him made Poe wish she was just rolling her eyes now. "Commander Dameron, do you think you would have made it as far as that microphone if I didn't want you near it?"

"I guess not." He held her gaze for a moment longer before he dropped his eyes. "Sorry."

"Nothing to be sorry for, Poe. I care about her too, and I want to hear from my brother. It's a war and we can't always get what we want."

Poe gave a dry, humourless laugh. "No, we really can't."

Leia turned back to her work, but she hadn't dismissed him, and Poe didn't feel like getting up to leave just yet. He sat at the table for a while, just watching the hologrammed plot graphs in the centre of the table as they slowly rotated. Planets gradually came in and out of view, but the picture always looked much the same. A couple of marked First Order hideouts, and many, many more suspected and unknown.

"I don't know why I care so much," he said, finally. "I only met Rey once, and I was sprinting here to get to talk to her again. That's weird, right?"

"You only met that young stormtrooper twice and that's enough to keep you going back to his room every day."

"Hey... look, it's not like I'm keeping a bedside vigil any more, I only did that for a couple of days, and there's nothing wrong with going to see him."

"I agree. He needs friends." She made one last note and then looked up at him. "I'm just saying, between Finn and now Rey, maybe you fall in love fast these days."

Poe could feel the back of his neck stiffen. "I'm not in love with Rey."

Leia just let all the implications of that partial denial hang in the air for a moment.

"Okay," she said, easily, "Why do you think you're so worked up over a cut off radio transmission?"

Poe drummed his fingers on the table again. "I think that I didn't get to finish telling her what happened to Finn. I didn't get to the end, and now she doesn't know whether he's awake or not. Even though he's not, and that's bad news... if it were me out there, not knowing when I'd get to hear from the Resistance again, I'd want to know how he was for sure."

The General smiled. "You're a kind man, Poe, and I'm glad you care about them both. Finn and Rey seem like they need some people around who care."

"Thank you."

"Now I have to get to work," she said, turning away. This time it was a dismissal. "I suggest you do the same."

 

Poe's life had been getting back to normal, such as it is. He trained like normal. He socialised like normal. After the first few days after Starkiller, when he wasn't eating or sleeping right and kept passing out at Finn's bedside, he came to his senses and hadn't shirked his responsibilities to his squadron or his General or himself. He's behaving as healthily as anyone could ask of him.

Yet he still has these moments, every once in a while, where he forgets how to act with restraint.

"I just want more information," he said, through gritted teeth. "You must know something about Finn's medical condition other than what you keep telling me you don't know!"

"I know plenty about Finn's medical details and needs," Doctor Kalonia said, sharply. "It doesn't automatically follow that I'm going to tell you."

"Why can't you tell me? I'm a commander!"

"You're not his superior officer," the doctor said, kindly but firmly. "You're not part of his chain of command. I understand wanting to know, you're used to knowing this kind of information about the soldiers close to you, but you don't have any right to Finn's medical information.

"But he's not part of anyone's squad," Poe said. "We're not going to shove him off in a corner because he's not real Resistance, are we?"

"Of course not-"

"Because if anything, he's a refugee ="

The doctor put a hand over Poe's and he cut off abruptly. He realised he'd clenched his hands into fists again and consciously tried to uncurl his fingers.

"Finn _is_ someone we regard as a refugee. He's also a very wanted refugee. You have to understand, I'm not protecting his medical information because we don't regard him as important. He is important, and he's very vulnerable, and that's even more reason not to release any information about his condition to anyone outside his chain of command."

Poe let out a heavy sigh. This made sense. He wanted Finn to be safe. Everyone was trying to keep him safe in their own way. It was just that he was getting frustrated spending day after day not knowing when he would wake up, or why he was still asleep, and he desperately wanted to know more. But he clearly wasn't getting anywhere with this line of inquiry, and outbursts like this weren't likely to get him very far.

He still took a childish satisfaction in slamming the side of his fist into the doorframe on his way out.

  
  


Poe was not at all surprised to find himself summoned to the General's office that afternoon. He also wasn't surprised to find that she was sending him off world. In the morning, he'd probably agree with her; he was going to look back on the way he'd acted today and judge it behaviour not befitting a commander. Right now, though, he was just pissed.

"The First Order know our location," she said, setting a star map out before him. "We haven't had to worry about it yet, because they're so disordered after the destruction of Starkiller that they can't mount an attack, but they know where we are and at some point, they're going to strike. I'm sending you scouting for a new planet to make our home base. There are a lot of parameters, but the technicians have narrowed down the options based on most of them. I need you to head out and look for... well, you'll know it when you see it..."

"You're getting rid of me."

Leia had been running through proposed destinations on her list, and looked up sharply at his protest. "I beg your pardon?"

He swallowed. "I can stay on base. You don't need to send me off world. I'm useful here and I'll... I'll keep my shit together here."

"I am not getting rid of you."

"I know what people are saying," he said, balling his hands into fists. "I mean, my friends say it to my face! That I'm too obsessed with Finn and... I don't know. They think I'm wasting my life and I need to get out here, but I've stopped, I swear, and this morning was just..."

The General wasn't saying anything, just letting him run his mouth. Poe hated when she did that.

"Is that all?" she asked, when he finally stopped. "Commander - Poe - you went through a difficult ordeal two weeks ago, one that understandably shook you. You reacted in a way that isn't at all strange. I would have happily granted you leave if you asked for a break, and I would have made you take it if I thought you weren't up to the task right now. You're acting a little differently than before, but you've been through a lot, and that's not so shocking that I plan to intervene."

Poe didn't know what to say. "I'm... glad you think so."

She squinted at him. "Do you think differently? Is there a reason I should be worried about you? Because if you're having other problems, we can discuss that, too."

"No. No, that's it really." He swallowed. "I guess I was just worried that other people would think I was... losing it."

"You're very hard on yourself, for someone cocky enough to style himself the best pilot in the Resistance."

He still felt like he was on shaky ground, but that still made Poe smile. "You think I'm the best pilot in the Resistance, too."

"You'll have to watch out, though. Pava is catching you, now that she's getting some more experience. And from what Han tells me, Rey could give you a run for your money when she gets back."

Poe sucked in a sharp breath at the mention of Han's name, but the General just kept talking as though it were perfectly ordinary to mention her dead ex-husband. Which to her, perhaps it was.

"So," he said, after a beat, "Where do I head first?"

"You've got a three planet trip, starting with Kashyyk - I know, it's a shame you couldn't take Chewbacca, but we don't know when he'll be back - then back here for a day before you start on another two-planet hop." She smiled a wry, knowing smile. "I'm glad you're on board."

He still didn't like being sent off-base right now, not when he didn't know when Finn would wake up or when Rey would call again. His resistance had withered in the face of Leia's calm reasoning, though, as he should have known it would. "I guess I can handle being off world for a few days."

"You still don't believe me?" Leia snorted. "Commander Dameron, if you think I assign missions that are this crucial based on who I think most needs to get out more, then you probably do need to get off base and get some perspective."

"Yes, General," he replied, quickly. "When do I leave?"

  
  


Thrust. Parry. Turn. Guard. Thrust.

Rey worked through the limited repertoire of lightsaber motions she'd learned so far. Back and forth across the cliff top, over and over. Luke had been especially withdrawn that morning, and stood instructing her for just under an hour before he excused himself. Just like every day when he did that, Rey kept working, even though he'd taught her nothing new to practice today.

There were many forms of lightsaber combat, Luke had told her, when they started. He then admitted, somewhat apologetically, that he didn't actually know them all. "I'd hoped that when I came to the old Jedi temple on this planet there'd be... something, some kind of records, so I could reconstruct more of the old Jedi teachings, but..." he trailed off in a shrug.

"I thought you thought the Jedi were wrong."

"They were sometimes wrong. They had some bad ideas. They also had hundreds of years of experience in training more young Jedi, which I was lacking when I started up a school and tried to teach it myself. And you've seen for yourself how well that turned out."

Then he'd trailed off into another of his long silences, his eyes unfocused and his mind clearly elsewhere.

Rey waited as long as she could, but she felt an urgency to deal with the First Order that Luke didn't seem to share. "Forms?"

"Yes, forms," Luke had said, snapping back to attention. "Obi Wan did at least have time to teach me the first form, the teaching form, and I picked up a few others, so... So. We begin with the guard stance..."

That had been a week ago, and they were still practicing the first form. Rey was growing to like Luke, but the most frustrating part of working with him was that if she complained too much, he'd just walk off and shut himself in his house. Of course, on days like today, he walked off and hid in his house anyway, so perhaps she was better off complaining whenever she felt like it, if she was going to be like that...

She was still practicing her stances, over and over again, but by now she was lost in thought and getting angry to boot. She thrust a little too hard and felt herself stretch past the point of her balance. She didn't lose her footing, but she could feel the muscles in her torso clench to pull her back from the tipping point, and she wavered on her feet before she pulled herself back to stability. It was just a split-second's wavering, but it was the kind of the mistake that had gotten her maimed in the past and could get her killed in the future, and she swore under her breath before lowering her arm.

"You hold your saber like it's a staff," Luke said, suddenly.

Rey stiffened, but didn't jump. "When did you get here?"

"When you were distracted, it seems. Meditation isn't just a tool to reach the Force, you know. It's also something you use in combat, and in combat training, to keep your focus precisely on what you're doing."

"I know how to focus in combat. I've been in a lot of combat, you know. Really."

"I can tell." Luke nodded. "You must have learned your weapon very well to bring those old habits with you when you pick up a new one."

"That's very annoying, you know that?"

"What is?"

She raised an eyebrow, but he looked genuinely baffled. "The way you can praise me and criticise me at the same time."

"Oh!" His eyes went wide. "I didn't realise. Sorry. Your weapon handling really is very good."

"Thank you."

She switched off the lightsaber and hefted the handle slightly in her hand.

"Yes, that's part of the difference," Luke said, immediately. "Your staff is quite heavy, I imagine. It would have to be to pack enough blunt force as a weapon. Whereas lightsabers are close to weightless. They require a whole different technique."

Rey took a quick glance at Luke's belt, at the empty loop where he could have carried a weapon.

"Not to mention, the length of a staff, and the way you use it, are totally different to even a conventional blade. The wide arcs, taking up a lot of space, and hitting with blunt force. As opposed to the slicing motion with a blade or a lightsaber. It's an adjustment." He chuckled. "Although there are always blasters."

She hefted the handle again, and then deftly tossed it in the air, catching it by the saber end instead. She held the butt of the handle out towards Luke.

"Show me."

"No."

Luke hadn't touched it, the whole time she'd been here. She offered it to him that day, when she'd first arrived, and for a long moment it had seemed like he was considering taking it back. But after a while he said 'put that away, please', and she had, and they fell to talking instead. But every time she trained, every time he reached over to correct her grip or her stance, he carefully avoided even brushing against the saber's metal handle.

It doesn't make Rey feel any better about carrying it. It was bad enough, the visions she had the first time she picked it up. No matter what Luke said about that being the Force, not the saber itself, it made her wary of the thing. The fact that Luke refused to touch it only disturbed her more.

"Come on, I mean it." She took a step closer. "Show me how it's done. You take the saber, and I'll take my staff, and we'll see who can really match who."

He held her gaze, and he knew that she saw the challenge in her eyes. She knew he wasn't going to rise to it, either. She shook it again.

"I didn't bring this all the way across the galaxy so I could use it, you know. I brought it so I could return it to you."

"Whether I want it or not?" Luke raised an eyebrow.

"Lots of things come whether you want them or not."

"Just like that saber came to you," he nodded at it. "You didn't want it, but here you are."

Rey's face twisted in frustration. "That's not fair."

"I wish we could count on being fair." He cleared his throat. "There's little point in fighting your staff with a lightsaber, you know. I'd slice it in two at the first blow."

"I know," she said, crestfallen. "I wish I could have a laser staff, though."

"If you ever want to make a journey to one of the crystal mines, you could build your own lightsaber, and make one with two ends if you wanted to. It would still be different to the staff that you're used to. Less of it to grip."

"No time for that." She looked, frustrated, at the weapon in her hand. "I guess I"m stuck with this one."

"For now," Luke agreed. "But it's a good training saber. It was good enough for me. Good enough for Kylo's grandfather, too."

She shot him a suspicious look. "You're taunting me."

"That's one way of looking at it." He sat down on the mossy grass. "Run through those stances again, and keep your focus this time. Stay in the moment, and in the motion of what you're doing. If you succeed at that, then I'll tell you the story."

  
  


Poe found himself in a couple of odd places in the search for a new Resistance home. There was a series of heavily forested islands on an ocean world, with the kind of thick undergrowth that would have been great for hiding a whole village under, but not so great for landing an X-wing. The volcanic pits of Sullustan, for one, spelunking into caves that were hotter than he was comfortable with for being behind such thick walls of rock, and then traipsing somewhat reverently through chambers that had once been home to a colony of Alderaanian refugees. And then there was a visit to the home of New Alderaan itself, and the rare opportunity to meet with Princess Evaan.

"Commander Dameron," she said, warmly, the moment he stepped off his ship. "Welcome."

"Your majesty," he bowed, and kissed her hand. "I didn't expect such a personal welcome."

Evaan turned to walk away from the ship, and made a short gesture with her hand summoning Poe to follow. He walked almost in step with her, keeping only half a step behind, in a deference learned from a lifetime of following generals and a year following one general in particular.

"When Leia sends her best pilot, I want to see him for myself," Evaan said, warmly. "And besides, while we've rebuilt an awful lot, Alderaan is still not a large colony. We're just one nation on a big planet, and we were always small to begin with.."

"It's still an important place to many. I hold it in high regard, and I'm honoured you'd come to receive me in person."

"Alderaan is important to you?"

"It's important to history. Alderaan was lost, and years later it could have been my home planet in the Yavin system that followed. Or my new home on D'Qur."

"Ah," she smirked. "Straight to business."

"Not at all. I just want to convey Alderaan's value. Besides, it's important to the General. That makes it important to me."

"Ah, so you say." Evaan sighed and roller her eyes at that. "So important, and yet Leia doesn't have the time to visit herself! She hasn't been by in nearly ten years, not since Ben..." she trailed off and made an obscene gesture with her hand instead, one that was not remotely royal and that Poe had only ever seen in use among military units.

He laughed, although he wasn't sure it was correct to laugh in front of royalty when they hadn't laughed first. Despite Leia's heritage, they were never expected to know or follow royal protocol around her; she gave up standing on any of that when she became a General, and he sometimes suspected she gave it up long before that, too.

"I'm sorry, your Majesty. I forget that you used to be a pilot."

"I sometimes forget that I'm a Princess now, even though I've been doing it for nearly two decades," she said, with a frown. "I used to be such a die hard royalist. Can you believe I once told Princess Leia that she didn't respect the crown enough?"

Poe smirked. "You had an interesting definition of 'loyalist' if you were talking to the Princess like that."

"Sounds like you have an interesting definition of respect yourself, hotshot."

"When nobody's setting out protocol for you, the best thing you can do is try to blend in."

Evaan led Poe and BB-8 on an excellent tour of New Alderaan, its features and its landmarks, and they took a shuttle to cruise above the more remote parts of its territory to see what could be suitable for a Resistance hideout. There were several areas that looked promising, and Poe could picture them setting up here. It was perfect in a lot of ways, with access to other systems without being too exposed to heavily trafficked space routes. He loved the idea of hitting the Resistance somewhere that was only a short hop away from a city that was cozy but alive the way New Alderaan was.

And yet.

They were sitting down to a meal, a simple but delicious spread of bread, cheeses and local fruits, when Poe said, "You can't really host us here, can you?"

"If Leia asked it of Alderaan, we would. Most of us would be delighted to." She glanced out at the people walking the street below them. "It's not as if all of the Alderaanian refugees are in agreement, of course. We can't all agree on anything. Taking in the Resistance would be challenging for some of us. When you've suffered the destruction of your home planet and found a new one..."

"Of course. Nobody wants their home put in danger's way. The Resistance would respect any Government that didn't want to risk hosting us, regardless of the reason."

"That's why there's always Hoth," Evaan said, with a wry smile. "May I never set foot on that particular wasteland again."

Poe hadn't known she was on Hoth, too, and now he was curious about that. But he had a mission, and he was running out of time.

"But you can't take us in. I don't see any way it would work. It's not just that you're all that's left of Alderaan, and that we bring a lot of danger. You're one small group on this entire planet."

"You're right.This planet doesn't have a unified government. We share it with two other colonies. Small colonies," she added, "But it would be difficult to host you without coming to an agreement with them, and while the relationships between the three of us aren't hostile, they aren't friendly, either. I don't see how they'd take it well if we decided to host an army of wanted rebels."

"And that wouldn't be a good situation for us, either." Poe frowned. "I'm sorry, I feel like I've wasted your time."

Evaan had called for a glass of mead some time ago, but had left it in the ice bucket by the table while she listened to Poe's latest tales of war with the First Order, and of course what Evaan's old friend had been up to. Now she reached for it, and poured each of them a glass before she leaned back and spoke again.

"I wouldn't have put Alderaan on the list, if I were Leia, but in some ways she's a much better ruler than me. More selfless, anyway. That's why she couldn't stay and rule Alderaan once we rebuilt it. She had a whole galaxy to improve."

"Your majesty?" Poe asked, uncertainly.

"New Alderaan fit your criteria, and Leia couldn't bear to strike it off the list just because she wanted to protect it. It would break her heart to see the First Order come here, as they inevitably will, but if it was possible that this was the best place for the Resistance, than she had to send someone to investigate. The fate of the galaxy comes first."

"But you can't host the Resistance here."

"We would, if Leia asked."

"But you can't," Poe frowned. "The land here is great, you're right, the location is wonderful, and you'd be very friendly neighbours, but we can't say the same for the other two nations on this planet. There's no telling how unstable it could be if they didn't want us here."

For much of their tour, Evaan had affected the warm but detached air that the General often had about her, which must have been some kind of comportment they taught them at Alderaan Royalty School or whatever. But every so often Evaan dropped the poker face of leadership and became the kind of character that was much more familiar than Poe. A pilot, a fighter, someone who clearly went hard and relished the moment she was living in, wanting to hungrily lick it all up because tomorrow it might be gone. Like now, when she planted her elbows on the table and leaned forward, no thought for decorum even for her guest. She looked at him as though Poe had thrown a pair of dice in the air and she couldn't wait to see where they landed.

"It seems to me, Commander Dameron, that you knew this planet was unsuitable for you already. You didn't need to come here to weigh up the political situation, that must all be in the brief. So why come here at all?"

"The General sent me."

"We're the same there," Evan laughed, and clinked her glass of mead against Poe's. "She has, from time to time, had to point out to me that I'm the Princess now and she's supposed to defer to my decisions about Alderaan, not the other way around. And still, what she says, I'll follow. Come on, you're a smart kid, you know what I mean."

Poe did. "Why did the General send me here when there's no hope of us moving here? I wish I could give you an answer, your majesty, but I just don't know."

"I don't think I was right about Leia sending you here just because she couldn't let her personal feelings interfere,"  said Evaan. "I think she sent you because she can't afford to be away from her command right now, not even for a day, but she must really, really, want to go home."

  
  


No matter how much he did it, space travel always made Poe lose track of time. Especially the way he'd been travelling on this mission, hopping from planet to planet, in and out with barely a day on any one surface. When he stopped back on D'Qar at the end of his first leg, he was exhausted.

"Carry me," he groaned to BB-8, as he climbed down from the cockpit. "I'm too tired to go on."

[that's because you forgot to sleep one night in there.]

"I didn't forget. It's just that that planet was... you know... that thing where it's always daylight and you can never get any sleep. Ugh. Of course I went straight on to Alderaan."

[lucky we got back at night so you won't have that problem here, then. i don't get the sun thing. can't you just install some solar panels? then daylight will recharge you better than night time.]

"Not how humans work, buddy," Poe said, around a yawn. "I'll come to bed soon. Just gotta get something else done."

The General's light was on. She did sleep sometimes; Poe knew that from the rowdy night of drinking when he'd first been accepted into the Resistance and she'd fired a blaster out of her bedroom window to get them to shut up. But sober Poe had never known the General's door to be closed to him, and tonight was no exception.

"Poe," she said, warmly, as soon as he stuck his head around the door. "Come in."

"Thank you, General," he said, stepping into the room. And as there was no way of hiding it, he heaved the huge packing crate onto her desk.

Her eyebrows shot up, and she looked back at him as he settled into the chair facing her. "Should I open this first, or ask for your report?"

"You'll have a full report in the morning, but the quick version's pretty quick." He stifled another yawn. "Nurrias III yes, Sullustan yes, Alderaan no."

Her face softened, just slightly. "Not Alderaan?"

"No. They'd be willing to have us, of course, you know, anything for General Organa, the great hero who never comes to visit." She laughed, and he smiled, and dropped back into sincerity. "They really would, you know. They'd give you the whole planet if you asked for it."

"But I shouldn't."

"It wouldn't work. Politically. Not internal Alderaan politics, the planetary stuff." He tapped the box. "I have to hit the hay, but in lieu of a home, they sent you this."

Leia gave him a knowing smile, and lifted off the top. The room slowly filled with the scent of the wixtria flowers from the palace of Alderaan, and from beneath it, she pulled out box after box of preserved fruits, fried pockets of dough, and every other food Evaan's chef could think of that would survive a flight through space. That she knew what Evaan would pack her didn't stop Leia from gasping in delight.

It was a privilege to see the General excited like she was a child again, but it didn't stop Poe from yawning. Leia looked at him fondly. "You didn't sleep the whole trip, did you?"

[no, he didn't, not hardly at all. he kept complaining about the sun,] BB-8 interrupted.

"Go, then. Sleep. As much as you need. We'll pick this up in the morning."

"Thank you, General. I hope you enjoy it."

Even Poe's salute was drooping. He could feel his eyes drifting shut every now and again as he followed BB-8 back through the hallways, trusting the droid to lead him right to bed. When BB-8 stopped and Poe dropped into a nearby chair, it took him a moment to realise that he wasn't in his quarters at all; BB-8 had led him back to Finn.

"Just for a minute," Poe told the droid.

Then he shuffled his chair closer and took Finn's hand.

"You okay there, buddy? I just went on the longest trip..." he began, and kept talking until he'd talked himself to sleep.

  
  


This was the right place, Poe thought. He really hoped it wasn't just his own biases saying that. It would be an easy trap to slip into, because this was exactly the kind of planet that he loved. One with a climate that was comfortably warm, and trees that reached for the sky. A new home base where he could see green almost everywhere he looked, except for when he crested a hill and saw some blue.

Not that there was any blue from the valley he was looking at to make camp. It was high in the mountains, where the air was thinner and they were a long way from the sea; a long way from the nearest city, too. It took him the better part of a day to trace and retrace his steps across the valley floor, making sure they could fit in every current resistance member and any others they picked up along the way, too. But at last the work was done and he was back in his X-wing, cresting over the mountain ridge and speeding down towards even greener pastures, where he'd find a city and a bed for the night.

That was the other reason he worried he was making a hasty decision. Kriff alive, Poe was tired. He was tired from the journey, tired of being away from home. It had taken months to start thinking of D'Qar as home, instead of his dad's place back on Yavin IV, but he'd been through enough to cement it. The Resistance was his home and his family now, and being away for this long made him ache for the company and the sounds and smells and yes, the predictable military routine. He was tired from all this time in his X-wing with only BB-8 for company.

"You're the best, buddy," he said, wearily, as he dismounted from his cockpit and cuffed BB-8 on the dome. "But I'm still looking forward to getting back and having someone I can hug."

[you can hug me,] BB-8 corrected him. [i can't hug you back.]

Poe smiled, fondly. BB-8 was a very literal droid, but he sometimes veered towards the poetic. "That's true. It's the hugging back that I miss, but I'll hug you before I go to sleep tonight to tide me over."

[i can wrap you in my grappling cables if that would help.]

"Really nice of you to offer, but no thank you."

Poe checked into the inn so he could shower and set BB-8 up in his bedroom to dock and recharge. It was still full daylight on this side of Kasstar, but the prospect of walking out of the shower and straight into bed was very, very appealing. His stomach growled, though, reminding him he had other needs to take care of before he could finally hit the hay.

Military service could see you travelling a lot of different places in the galaxy, and meeting a lot of different people. Often it had you meeting the kind of people who travelled a lot, too. And yet, Poe rarely came across anyone he knew outside of the planets he lived on. The galaxy was huge, almost unimaginably huge, and while he once disembarked in every unfamiliar spaceport and instinctively scanned the crowd for familiar faces, he'd long since lost that habit. In dark and challenging times like these, and particularly on this mission, it was the anonymity of an unfamiliar city that was comforting.

And yet, it was hard to ever stop yearning for the familiar, especially at the tail end of a long journey when he was yearning for home and for company. So Poe wasn't at all disappointed, though more than a little stunned, to meet an old lover when he walked into a nearby eatery and ordered himself some grub.

"Poe!" Diarg Xate shouted, across the quiet dining room. It was so out of place that half the room looked up in surprise, and not just Poe. "Poe Dameron, fancy seeing you here."

"Hey there, Di," he replied, embarrassed and delighted. "You're making a scene."

"Yeah, but baby, you're worth it."

Di pulled up a seat across from him and leaned forward on his elbows, all bright eyes and anticipation. Poe had only just sat down. Di was being presumptuous. Poe didn't mind one bit.

The first question he asked, of course, was 'What brings you here?'

Di was another human pilot and a kindred spirit to Poe, even if he was one who had faded from his life as people were wont to to when you graduated from flight school and had to find out what happened next. Di had been a year ahead of Poe in school, graduating from the Academy when Poe was only twenty one. Poe had been in awe of him as a first year - Di flew great stunts, beautiful loops and barrels, but he was a stunning team pilot, too, always just in the right place in formation and aware of exactly where the rest of his squadron was.

Academy training lasted for four years, so Poe had three to admire Di in relatively close range. For most of that time he didn't dare approach him; Poe hadn't always been the confident Commander Dameron. He had to grow into confidence, month after slow, struggling month, year after year. He got bold by practicing, the first time he asked two other cadets in his training unit to hang out after their day's drills, and he was thrilled to find they said yes. Asking was nerve-wracking, but Poe found that people nearly always said yes to him, and even a 'no' wasn't nearly as bad as fear of the thing.

So he asked again and again, and he made more friends, and when he approached Di after class one day to ask if he wanted to hang out, he was barely nervous at all any more. The fear of rejection was nothing compared to the warmth he felt when Di's eyes brightened and he said "And evening with the next rising star? I'd be delighted."

Friendship had started to come easily, but Di was something else. Poe found himself always wanting more time with him, wanting to be closer, in ways he wasn't always sure he was ready to ask for yet. But with Di's academy education coming to an end, and Poe with another year to go, he knew he was running out of time.

They slept together the night of Di's graduation. Poe was out there in the parade ground to cheer at the ceremony, snuck up to Di's side to congratulate him at the whole of school dinner, and snuck into the after party that was supposed to be for the graduating class only, too.

"Do you know where you're heading yet?" Poe asked, as they crept away.

"I know where I'm assigned," Di replied, with a wry smile. "That's not the same as where I'm going."

He'd quit in a blaze of glory to work in Han Solo's racing contest, only six months after he'd finished his training. They'd met up a few times since then, and always landed in bed. It wasn't hard to keep finding the guy; Republican military spent more time on busy, populated worlds than they did on the backwaters he was always trawling through for the Resistance. It was never going to be a lasting relationship, but it had been worth the effort to look up the racing schedule every time Poe was on a planet with a decent racing contest. Right from the first time they'd ever kissed, at the graduation party where Poe wasn't supposed to be, Di had been quick to figure out what Poe liked, and he never forgot what he learned.

Back in the present, Poe was glad to see him, if more than a little surprised to find Di on a planet that wasn't remotely known for racing. And he was so, so tired, and so badly wanted a hug, that it was easy and welcome to fall into having dinner with him, and then fall into having drinks, and then fall all over him as they stumbled down the street towards their hotel.

"Hey, that's not my room," Poe blinked, as Di opened a door.

"No, silly," he chuckled. "It's my room."

This routine was comforting in its familiarity. Di closing the door; Poe crowding him against it to kiss him, pressing the whole length of his body into Di's until they melted into each other. They'd been through variations of this dance over the years, but they both knew their parts well enough that they didn't need to speak.

Except that as Di's hands smoothed their way down Poe's back, warm and heavy, pulling him in even closer, Poe realised that he didn't want to. He'd come here out of habit, going through the motions, and it was almost enough to get him into bed. But the truth was, he wasn't feeling this. Right now, Di really wasn't what Poe wanted.

He didn't think about what he did want, whether it was someone lying in a hospital bed several star systems away, or whether he was just getting old.

"Hey," he said, and that was enough to break their spell. "Hey, Di, I don't think I'm up for this."

Di didn't laugh, and he didn't seem disappointed, but he did look confused. "Really?"

"Yeah, really. Sorry, I don't know what it is, you know, it's just... life's been pretty weird lately, there's a lot happening..."

"Sure, I get it," Di said. He let Poe step away, but kept leaning against the back of the door. "Sometimes you just don't feel it."

"Yeah, right?" Poe smiled a half smile. "It was good to see you, but I think I'm just going to go back to my own room and hit the sack."

Di stepped into his space again and put a gentle hand on his shoulder, running it down Poe's arm until he caught his wrist. "Stay here. We don't have to do anything. Just sleep here with me, and you can go in the morning."

"Yeah, I could do that," Poe said, slowly. It had its appeal; it would be good just to share the close space with somebody again. He could definitely go for hugs and sleep. He stripped off his jacket, and watched Di do the same, with fond memories of all the other times they'd done this, more hastily or performatively depending on the event. And then just as he settled into bed and Di went to turn off the light, Poe saw the note in the pocket of the jacket Di had left on the bedspread.

Poe respected privacy, and he respected secrets. But he had fought a lot of battles now, and learned to be suspicious. And he knew that a racer taking a boozy holiday on a beach town wasn't likely to write his shopping lists on the kind of crisp, blindingly white paper that could only stay that clean on the tightly controlled closed system of a major space station here.

He turned it over, and saw "Dameron is Resistance, he could find out our operations" and then, betraying the writer's previously precise handwriting, HOLD HIM HERE.

Di caught him with the note in his hand the second before he turned out the light.

There was total darkness, then another body heavy on top of him, pinning him down to the bed, and something around his wrist. The next time the light came on, Di was on the other side of the room and Poe was handcuffed to a bed.

"What the fuck, Di," he snarled. "What is this? What are you doing with the First Order?"

"I was never going to hurt you," Di snapped back. "They're pretty short of pilots right now, and they pay well."

"Are you for real?" Poe tugged at his restraints. "How can that _possibly_ strike you as a good reason to join them?"

"They're not so bad."

"Oh, I _really think they are_." Poe stared at him for a moment, breathing heavily, but Di didn't seem inclined to tell him anything more. "Okay then, so what's this all about? They're based here, is that it? You're chaining me up so I can't find the First Order base and tell everyone to come by and bomb them?"

He didn't really need Di's confirmation. He could feel the truth of it, a sick feeling in his stomach, even before he said it. Of course the rest of the First Order were in hiding to recover; they knew that. What they hadn't considered is that the First Order wanted the same things in a home base that the Resistance did. It was not surprising at all that Poe had come so close to uncovering them while he was scouting for a new home.

What was surprising was Di's silence. It was an easy question to answer, and Di was usually anything but silent.

"What else?" Poe asked, dangerously quiet. "There's something else. What aren't you telling me?"

Di's eyes glanced to Poe's wrist, to the bedframe, which itself was bolted to the wall. "It's not just that they're based here. Well, it is. But since you're here, I think they've decided to go on the attack."

Poe stared at him, the meaning of it dawning on him. "There's only one target they can be going for. You're keeping me here while they attack my home."

"Not Yavin IV -"

"My _new_ home!" Poe spat. "Don't you get that?"

"I was never going to hurt you -"

"Coward," Poe spat, despite himself. With Kylo Ren he could be whip-smart and witty in the face of captivity. That was easy. With Kylo Ren, there was nothing to lose that was not already lost. Di had been an idol, a lover, an equal and a kindred spirit, and Poe couldn't conjure the cool he needed to mock him and smirk in his face. All he had for Di was venom and vinegar, words hurled from his throat like he couldn't stand the taste of it.

Di's face was deadpan as he watched him strain against the cuffs. "That's not fair."

"That's _not fair_?" Poe laughed a high, humourless laugh. "I call you a coward, and _that's_ what's unfair here?"

"You don't know. You don't know where I've been, and you... look, you chose to come here."

"Oh, sure, you drew me here under false pretenses when I wasn't even interested in fucking, but I'm to blame for you selling me out." Poe tried to step forward to make his point but the handcuffs pulled him up short. "You're a coward, and nothing's going to convince me otherwise. That's the only reason you'd trap me like this instead of fighting me in the air like we both deserve."

Luckily for Poe's sense of dramatic flair, this was the moment that he finally managed to work the screwdriver from his left side pocket to his right hand. He swore a hasty thanks for rubber handles as he plunged it into the electrical socket next to the bed.

Twenty seconds later, as Di was bellowing and flailing around in the dark while Poe quietly sat chained to the bed, BB-8 burst through the door and electrocuted the traitor until he'd lit up the entire room with the sparks and Di was lying quietly on the ground. Without a moment's hesitation, BB-8 rolled over his prone body and towards Poe, to start breaking through the chain around his wrists.

"Buddy," Poe said, fervently. "BB-8, you are the best droid."

[i know. i always thought that guy was a bit of a turd.]

"Hey!"

[so what now?]

A good question. Poe rubbed at his wrists and glanced at the door. "What now is that we don't get to sleep here for a night after all. We need to get in the air, and we need to get on the air, and we need to tell the General to evacuate the entire Resistance. Now."

  
  


Rey was sparring with Luke at the top of the island, actually sparring this time, and it was the closest thing she's ever felt to flying while keeping her feet on the ground. His blade burned bright green against the backdrop of grey rock, and when it mer her blue one, the sizzling sounds like a challenge, and like a victory.

Luke in combat is not what she expected at all. She thought of him as old and slow, and assumed he was really a teacher, not an opponent. Not an equal, like this. The elderly people on Jakku rarely fought openly like this, having found other ways to defend their holds against the creatures in the night. She expected Luke to match her, probably to beat her, but she thought he'd be slow and cunning, not... this. He was fast on his feet not slipping away but stepping into her space, forcing her to give up ground one tiny shuffle at a time.

He surprised her, too, with how passionately he fought. So far, when they'd trained, he just talked and watched and corrected her. He spoke with warm detachment when he told her about the Force, or combat forms, or how to move things with her mind. Duelling, he was anything but detached. He fought her like he was fighting Kylo Ren, or the Dark Side itself, like he had everything to lose and nothing to hold back.

She almost fell and had to yield at his first blow, but she recovered and struck back, and then tried to hold her ground. But she barely got an offensive blow in herself; holding seemed like the most she could do in his onslaught of blows. She didn't have time to think about strategy, just block, parry, block, block, don't let him corner you.

"You're good, but you're only using your head," Luke said, between blows. He sounded way too calm for someone his age who just fought a furious battle. Rey was panting.

"Oh, I'm using more than my head. I think my arms are going to fall off."

"When I first picked up a lightsaber, I didn't know much about hand to hand combat." Luke said it calmly, conversationally, his stance relaxed, until he suddenly punctuated the end of the sentence with a heavy lunge and slashed his saber wide. Rey blocked him, forced his blade down towards the ground like she once did in a snowfield not so long ago, but she lost a whole foot of ground.

"Well, you obviously learned," she said, when he didn't follow it up.

"I learned combat from the Force. You learned how to fight on your own, without anything else guiding you. It's a strength, but it's a weakness, too. You're falling back on old habits."

She lunged back at him, and Luke blocked her so easily it felt like he was pushing her whole body back with his mind, not just his sword.

"The old habits kept me alive. Not just in the desert, even when I was fighting Kylo Ren."

"I know. But if you want to beat him again, you need to remember to let the Force move through you all the time, not just when you're on the edge of a cliff."

He didn't say anything else; Rey knew what he was telling her. Putting it into action was another matter. He launched straight into another onslaught of blows, so she didn't have time to think about it, no time to get herself in the headspace she needed to reach out to the Force, and no time to calm her mind and find her centre. It was just block, parry, block, sidestep, try to find a patch of solid ground and hold it. But in between blows, and throughout the blows, she tried. She tried to reach out, to search for the Force, but she only found it when Luke swung and she ducked so hard she almost fell. It made her stop thinking, just for a moment or two, and it felt like the Force caught her when she let go.

This wasn't like the storm she'd channelled to kick Kylo Ren to a pile in the snow. This was something calm, almost funny. Slow down, it said. Let it happen. We've got this.

I can't slow down, Rey thought, irritably. Block, slash, block, step forward, push him back even if it's just an inch. But then she saw an opening for a split second, the way that Luke opened himself up on his right hand side. I can take that, she thought to herself, even as he advanced and she had to put all her weight into her back foot just to hold firm. But Luke's weight shifted and she saw it again, and lunged.

They were both still standing there, with the tip of Rey's lightsaber hovering at the bottom of Luke's ribs in a winning move, when they heard Chewbacca roaring at them as he came up the winding stairs.

"Well done," Luke said, sheathing his saber and stepping out of Rey's range. "You did it."

Rey sheathed hers too, and tucked it back into her belt. "What does that mean?"

"It means you're learning. There's still a lot more to learn, but you're learning. You're getting there." He looked past her, to the edge of the ridge, where Chewbacca was clambering over and coming towards them. "I think it will have to be another time."

She whipped her head around, and Chewbacca roared again. She hadn't registered the words before, but she listened now, and the thing she could make out most of all was 'leave'.

"We have to leave?"

"Leia... the General called. R2 caught their transmission," Luke said, translating the details. "They're asking if you can come back."

Rey looked back and forth between them as Chewbacca growled his agreement. "Right now? Did she say what happened?"

Another growl. No. "Just that they need you back."

"Well that's it then, we need to go." She grabbed Luke's sleeve, but he slid away instantly, out of her grasp.

"I'm not going with you, Rey."

"Then how am I supposed to go? They need us! My whole mission was to come and find you because they need us, you can't just say that you won't!"

"Yoda once told me not to go to my friends when they were in danger. I did, and it got me hurt, but I think Yoda was wrong. You need to go. I just can't come with you."

"But why not?"

"I'm not ready."

"I wasn't ready to leave Jakku, either. The universe doesn't wait until you're ready. That's what you're trying to say about the Force, right? When it wants you to go, then you'll go."

Luke didn't answer. He didn't pull his hood up, either, but the way his head drooped forward was just as much an act of hiding. Rey had spent enough time with Luke to know when he wasn't going to talk about something any further. She also knew that when he got that look, he was usually about a minute away from retreating back into his hut and locking the door.

"Well, I can't stay. I still want to learn more, but I can't stay here just training when they could be in danger."

Chewbacca grunted: "They _are_ in danger."

"Then I'm going. But I'm not prepared."

"I can't help that."

"You could tell me the rest! Right now! Or you could give me a book, surely you must have some books. Just give me something I can use to keep going."

"Lightsaber combat doesn't have a secret to it," Luke said, impatiently. "Neither does using the Force. You learn one stage, and then you progress on to another. There's no single secret I've been hiding from you, and there isn't one piece of wisdom I can give you and send you out into the galaxy ready to fight anyone."

"Then I'll have to go," Rey said, shortly. "You can come with me, and keep teaching me, or I can go and use what I know already. General Organa has asked me to go back, so I'm going to go."

"You're not a soldier, she can't command you," said Luke, almost petulantly. It was lucky Rey had so much practice at stopping herself from laughing at authority figures. For a moment, Luke sounded less like a wise old master and more... well, as young and defiant as she was.

"You're not my master, so you can't command me either," she shot back.

He blinked at her. "If I were your master, would you listen?"

"No," she said, after a moment's thought. "I'd still go back to the Resistance. That's where I should be. That's where they need me."

"Then we've both made the right choice."

Rey frowned. "So you're letting me go? You think it's the right thing to do?"

"As you said, I'm not your master. You can go where you wish. Sometimes you have to trust your students to make good choices. I ran out on my training, too, to save my friends, and nobody could have stopped me.

"Right." Rey said, uncertain. "Well, I'm going, then."

"Travel safely."

Rey had to go, but she wanted more than this, too. This wasn't enough, just like saying goodbye to Finn when he was still under hadn't been enough. She had once thought her heart was tied to a single planet, but now it seemed torn between two completely different ones, like she'd always be in one place and missing the other.

"I don't know when we'll see each other again," she admitted. "I don't like that."

"I guess I don't like it either."

Luke put a hand on her shoulder, and before she knew it she was rushing forward to hug him. She's never done that before. He flinched in shock, but he didn't push her away, and after a moment she felt his hands resting gently on her back. This was okay. She could leave, if she had this.

"You'll come back if you can," Luke said, pulling away and holding her at arms' length. "I know you will."

She glared at him, and he glared back, until Chewbacca started making grumpy noises about how they had to get ready to go.

"I'm sorry, Chewie," Luke said, and hugged him, too. "You tell Leia I love her won't you? Please?"

_You should tell her yourself,_ Rey thought. But she was tired of having this conversation, over and over again with no change whatsoever. Instead she got into the Falcon without a second glance, settled into the pilot's seat, and reached out with the Force to where her inner compass pointed now, looking for Finn to guide her home.


	2. Together

Poe was asleep when Rey landed on Chandara. He would have liked to be there when she came in, but he hadn't slept more than twenty minutes in a row since Di had tried to take him down on Bitros. When the time to relax finally arrived, he didn't have a chance to keep himself awake.

He and BB-8 had torn out of there at top speed, already on the comms to D'Qar yelling to evacuate, evacuate immediately, the First Order was gathering forces for an attack. He had a planet in mind as a new evacuation point, but he didn't dare name it out loud knowing he was so close to First Order airspace.

They landed on D'Qar in a storm of ordered chaos. The central square was full of people, more full than it was even when they were packing to attack Starkiller. People were ripping up everything that stayed still for long enough, and anything they left behind would be burned to the ground. They couldn't leave a single sign of their presence or their next destination. When Poe went to his bunk to stuff his remaining belongings into bags, Kare was already grimly standing by with a flamethrower, ready to start torching the evidence.

Nobody had time to tell him what to do or where to go. He was running on instinct and habit when he gathered his belongings and headed towards command. He didn't know what stage this evacuation was at - some people were launching cargo ships while others were priming fuel cells - but he knew a few things. He had to save his stuff, because he couldn't be sure anyone else was going to to it. And his squadron were looking to him for instructions, already asking if he couldn't stop and help. He wanted to stop and fix Jessika's malfunctioning comms unit or save Snap's pet robotics project, but at some point they were going to look to him for more than that. Poe needed to know when to tell them to drop the things they loved, burn them down and take to the skies. For that, he needed the General.

He found her, not in the command room, but in the archive room next door. She was helping two panicked archivists shift files into crates and crates onto trolleys to wheel out to the waiting ships. When Poe tried to get her attention and ask her to step outside, she told him to come in and help.

"I was tempted to leave the archives," she grunted, handing a crate off to Poe and sitting down on another one. She took a deep sigh, leaned back and closed her eyes for a moment. Then her eyes slit open again. "What are you waiting for, Commander? Keep packing."

"I'm very tired," Poe protested, but he started hauling boxes again all the same.

"I was tempted to leave them, say it's all just paper and our silicon chips are already stored. But chips can corrupt, and some of these boxes have evidence we might need to prove First Order crimes before a hearing, if such a thing ever got off the ground."

Poe grunted as he shoved another box into place. "We live in hope. Did I miss the briefing?"

"You did. It was over before you came out of hyperspace. Ackbar and I were already close to settling on Chandara as a new location, and your message just forced us to choose. I'm assuming your last destination would have made a poor choice?"

"A very poor choice. I'm glad you went with a planet from my first trip. I wouldn't trust the report I sent two days ago to have gone unread by other eyes."

"Indeed, that was my thinking too. It's going to be a rougher transition than we'd hoped for, but we've already sent the first ships ahead to prepare the ground for our moving in. Oh, and I've called Rey and Luke to try to get them back here. At the very least, they need to know where we are, but with luck I hope they'll be here tomorrow."

"You spoke to Rey?"

She smiled at him, just a little. "No, I spoke to Chewbacca. He assures me Rey is doing fine, though."

"Good. That's good." Poe scrubbed at his face. "What did I come here for?"

"Probably to ask how you can help. You're doing admirably."

"Destination. We covered that." He snapped his fingers. "Deadline?"

"As quick as we can. I have six fighters already in orbit on lookout. At the slightest sign of First Order warships, we give the word. Essentials are already packed."

"We have enough space for ground crew?"

"Yes. I've been pulling some strings." She gave him a tired smile. "Wish it didn't take someone blowing up a planet to get a government to take me seriously, but here we are."

"Great. With respect, General, I'm going to get back to my squadron."

"See to it." Leia dusted her hands off and reached for another archive. "I know how to find you."

He wanted to ask about Finn. The thought was buzzing around his head as he jogged away from the archive room, away from the offices and war rooms and towards the hangars and the people. Away from the Resistance's nervous system, and towards its heart. He'd seen one of the med staff loading up supplies from the hospital wing on his way out, and he desperately wanted to ask someone where Finn was.

He knew the answer to that, though. Finn would be gone, whether he was awake or not, the wounded all loaded onto the first carrier ship they could send off world. He'd be far away and maybe even on the ground in Chandara by now. Poe would just have to wait to see him again. It wasn't like he was short of things to keep him occupied.

From a distance, the task seemed simple - put everything in the ships and take off, then burn everything you left behind. Up close, it felt impossible. Too many people, with too many different priorities, all trying to make sure the thing they were most worried about was taken care of.

There weren't that many ships left on the ground when the First Order arrived, but Poe's was one of them. He barked out commands, including to two people who outranked him, to rush everyone onto the ships and get them in the sky. Kare was the last to leave; still spreading inflammables as long and far as possible, waiting until the last possible moment to launch into the air and fire, setting their old home ablaze.

"I hope that does it!" she yelled over the comms, as the last straggling ships weaved through heavy fire to keep climbing upwards, up into higher altitude.

"You know what to do," was all Poe had time to tell them all before they winked into hyperspace and hopefully far enough away.

The regular space flight was the worst part. Hyperdrives made planetary bodies seem so much closer to each other than they really were; it was easy to forget that flying without it was a long, slow slog. There were eight hours on this trip, with nothing to eat but emergency rations in tubes and nothing to do except complain about how slow it was, and watch over their shoulders for any sign of an unfriendly ship that would force them to call off the chase. The jump to lightspeed felt a lot likethe moment  when Poe finally saw a friendly ship appear in the sky above Jakku.

They emerged in the blue skies above black and rocky Chandara, and circled down to the volcanic pit that the Resistance was now calling home. The crater was vast, but the walls were steep and the air was already full with enough vehicles to make any crash-fearing pilot a little jumpy.

"There are caves!" Poe said to his teammates. "Along the crater walls. Steer clear from all the landings and takeoffs in the clearing, and just find yourself a cave."

People were already populating the lower caves, filling them with stores of food and medical supplies, and putting up tents for temporary housing where they were sheltered from the weather. Poe steered himself towards the ledge of a generously sized cave and neatly slotted his ship inside. He tumbled out of the cockpit as much as he stepped, and he was annoyed and grateful at BB-8's boundless energy.

"How do you not want to just stop and have a nap? Okay, yes, I know you don't get tired, I didn't - no, I don't need another explanation of how your fuel cells work."

[what do we do now?]

Poe groaned and rubbed his eyes before he stepped out to the lip of the cave and at the Resistance putting itself together again. The last week had been a long journey and really a long time for Poe and BB-8, but the whole Resistance made it here, and he was proud. Which is why the work wasn't over yet.

"Now, we go down and find out what's next."

There were things to unpack. There were structures to put up. There were wounds to heal, because the Resistance were good but nobody was so good that they could keep injuries at zero in a situation of this scale. Poe wasn't really acting as Commander Dameron when he kept working and working to get camp set up before nightfall. This was no battle plan, despite what some of them may joke, and it was no skirmish.

And yet he was commanding, ordering cooks to break into the stores, they needed everyone fed whether it depleted resources or not. He was issuing plans for a squadron to go searching for more food stores in the morning, to replenish the mountains they were probably all going to eat tonight. He was ordering people to bed when they grew tired and started to slip, well aware of the irony of it all when he was close to falling over himself.

Finally, when the sun was down and people were eating, Poe looked around and couldn't think of any other tasks that were vital right now. There were things to unpack and fix up one day, yes, but not right now. Now, everyone was fed or at least eating, everyone had somewhere to sleep, and they could all wake up the next morning ready to take up the fight again.

Finally, Poe thought, he could find a bunk, any bunk, and get some rest.

There was a light touch on his shoulder. "Commander Dameron?"

"What," he snapped. He regretted it when he looked over his shoulder to see Dr Kalonia, wearing an equally tired smile.

"I just thought you'd like to know that Finn is safe and stable. No injury or disturbance to his state during the move."

Soon, Poe would feel glad at the news, and relieved. Finn was okay. People had taken care of him. Right now, though, Poe just felt empty: he hadn't thought about Finn all day.

"Do you want to come and see him?"

The sheer force of habit and the familiarity of being by Finn's side tempted Poe to say yes. He was too tired to care, though, almost too tired to keep being polite to the woman who had been so patient and helpful with him throughout Finn's hospitalisation, even when - Poe could admit it now - he'd been a bit of an ass.

"No thanks. I trust you," he said, at last. He tried to think of something to say by way of farewell, but words were failing him now. Instead he followed BB-8 to his assigned sleeping spot and was out before his head hit the pillow.

  


Rey arrived on a different planet to the one she left. Instead of a field of bright green to meet her, there was a surface darker and more forbidding than any she'd seen before in her life. She landed the Falcon with great trepidation in the crater of an ancient volcano. Although she'd seen an X-wing fly out of there, she was adamant that there was no safe landing space and this was never going to work. It was only Chewbacca's calm, growled guidance that led her to a safe landing place.

She stepped gingerly out of the ship and onto the surface of another new world, now the sixth - sixth! - planet she'd ever set foot on. They were on a shallow ledge in the side of the wall, and she could see, now, the X-wings perched haphazardly in ledges and caves around the circular wall, the people pitching tents and getting fires going in others. They would house a whole fleet in these rock walls, and from above, nobody would see a thing.

Getting down was more precarious than even the stairs on Luke's island. Nobody had lived here, previously, nobody had wanted to, so they were yet to form pathways between the most used caves. None of these rocks were worn into smooth channels by the passing of the same feet ten times a day. By the time she and her crew - her odd but helpful crew of the new Falcon - reached the bottom, a crowd had gathered to greet her. She'd never had that many people interested in seeing her before, except when they were a crowd of Stormtroopers. It was enough to make her want to turn around and fly back to Luke's island on the sea.

Except that even as everyone started clapping her on the back and saying how glad they were to see her, Rey could already sense the group was moving and the crowd was parting. She wasn't all that surprised when the General suddenly stepped into view, and she didn't think twice before falling into her for a hug.

"I'm sorry, I couldn't bring him back," she whispered.

"He's a stubborn old moof-milker and I know you did everything you could. Don't be sorry," the General whispered back and didn't let her go.

It would have been nice if Rey and Leia could have sat down and talked just between the two of them. It would have been good, even great, to tell Leia how Luke was doing. That he seemed odd, but he also seemed healthy. That he missed her. Luke hadn't said that in so many words, but Rey thought it was there. They weren't friends, though, no matter how lovingly Leia welcomed Rey in. This wasn't a sunny afternoon on a pleasant gardenside cruise. This was a war, and everything was vital intelligence, even the news of Leia's brother. There was very little time to tell her the sentimental stories before Rey was ushered into the mission control room, in which the walls were still being set up as they spoke.

It echoed the day Rey first arrived in the Resistance; thrust into a strange room, with strange people asking her questions about where she'd been and who she met. Many things had changed; the room and the people, and the story. And Rey. Once again, though, she was standing in a room full of relative strangers, telling them about where she'd been and what she'd done, and a series of questions that seemed like they would never end.

  


Poe woke up after fourteen hours of delicious sleep and didn't know what to do. He should head to the command room, probably, find out what their priorities are, but he also wanted to go and find Finn. The problem was that he couldn't quite remember where the command room was, and he didn't know where the temporary medical wing was at all. He was asking directions to the medical tent when he overheard two people talking about Rey and stopped dead in his tracks.

"Rey's back?" he asked BB-8. The droid had been trundling along at his heels but had already taken off.

"Okay then, I guess he knows where he's going," Poe muttered, and took off in pursuit.

The medical tent was on the way to the command room, it turned out. Poe slipped through just long enough plant a kiss on Finn's forehead and a promise that he'd be back soon.

The command room was in full meeting mode, twenty or thirty people crowded around the centre table. A lot of their screens and holo projectors were still in storage, the setup held off until they were done with this strategy meeting, and they were using R2-D2 to project their plans instead. Poe would take that in soon, find out what they were doing next, and find out where they wanted him to get to work. First, though, his eyes were searching the crowd of people for one in particular.

He knew exactly when Rey saw him. She was mid-conversation with another wing commander, listening seriously as he gave her the background of his question, when her eyes fell on Poe at her side. She didn't break her concentration, just gave a quick double-take and turned back to business, but he could see the way her eyes brightened and her stance shifted just a little, more attentive and relaxed at the same time.

"Sorry I'm so late," he muttered to the admiral next to him.

"We were told to expect it," xe replied, xer voice serious but her tone kind. "I'm sure someone will catch you up later."

They were at the tail end of Rey's report when Poe had arrived, and when she wrapped up they moved on to maps. He had been happy to see Rey but less interested in Luke Skywalker's continued good health - this was more what he was interested in. Where was the First Order attacking, what were their paths, what are their likely supply lines? Where else were they hiding if they'd already turned up on a planet that the Resistance had shortlisted as safe?

Rey sidled up to him, though, and gave his hand a quick squeeze. "Hi."

"Hi," Poe whispered back. "Did you have a good trip?"

She just snorted in reply. "It was okay. I'm tired. Uh, I didn't want to ask the General because she seems really busy, but am I allowed to go now?"

Poe glanced around. He was interested in this, but there was nothing going on that he couldn't catch up on later. He took her hand again, gently, and led her out of the circle and the hastily-constructed building and into the morning sunlight.

"You want to see Finn, right?"

"He's here?"

"Of course he's here," Poe chuckled. "We wouldn't leave him behind."

"I didn't know that!" Rey jumped with the excitement of it. "I didn't know if he'd be here or off working somewhere else or maybe whether he'd left by now."

Oh. "He's... definitely not walked off."

"What's wrong?"

"Do you want to get something to eat first?"

"I'm hungry, but I really want to see Finn."

"Okay. Well. BB-8, can you go get us some bread from the mess tent or something?"

[I want to stay with Rey!]

"Rey needs food, though. I could do with some breakfast, too."

[fine,] the droid grumbled. [bb-8 will be the fastest droid and get back before you can even notice!]

"Okay, well, that's sorted!" Poe clapped his hands together. "The food is like five minutes' walk in the other direction see, and the med tent is just here."

"The med tent." Rey repeated it without inflection, like she wasn't reacting at all.

Poe paused before he unlatched the tent door. "Yeah, the med tent. It's temporary, though, we're going to rebuild everything with real walls soon."

"That's not what I'm concerned about."

"I know." Poe swallowed. "Finn's still unconscious. He's alive and his vitals seem fine, but he hasn't stirred since the operation to fix his spine."

"Okay." Rey's face moved through about five different expressions in as many seconds as she worked through how to feel about that information. "Is that normal?"

"I don't know. I don't really see a lot of people with their spines slashed in half by lightsabers, and I don't think Major Kalonia does either."

The corner of Rey's mouth twitched. "I guess that's fair."

"It's what I've got. They think he'll wake up some time, probably. Some people do. We just have to wait."

Rey huffed out a breath in what might be a humourless laugh. "Well, I know how to do that. Let's go."

She lost her aura of cool detachment the moment they both walked through the door and saw Finn unconscious on his bed. Rey just ran to his side, as if Poe wasn't even there. She touched him, his forehead, his neck, his arm. Then she flopped back in the chair that was already set up next to his bed, the place that Poe had been occupying whenever he could justify it, and started stroking his hand.

Poe felt a stab of hurt as he watched, from the way she seemed to forget about Poe the moment she entered the room to the way that she was sitting in his seat. He didn't leave, or say anything. He stood at the door and just watched. He felt jealous, yes, but Rey hadn't seen Finn for weeks and didn't know he was still unconscious. She hadn't known that she was coming back to find her friend was still here and not here at all. It took Poe all of that time to feel halfway normal around Finn again. He was jealous, but Rey deserved time with Finn, too. Anyone deserved time with Finn if they wanted to see him.

"Poe?"

He hadn't realised he was so lost in thought until Rey called out to him. "Yeah?"

"Are you going to sit down? There's another chair."

"I have to catch up with the General some time soon, find out what I need to do next..."

"If you want." Rey's gaze dropped again.

"Is it okay with you if I stay for a minute, though?"

"Of course!" "Okay," he said, and sat down on Finn's other side, taking his hand. "Just for a minute."

  


Rey has never been around so many people before. A slow morning in the Resistance is like the Niima marketplace times twenty. For the first three days, while they were still putting up temporary buildings, she slept in a tent with three other women. She'd slept in the desert before, and she'd slept in ships, and they both had their noises, but none of it compared to the strange and unpredictable noises that other people made in their sleep. The first night there, she hardly slept at all.

Then there were the... well, the everywhere else. There were people around when she ate, people when she went to bathe, people... just too many people, everywhere. There were whole teams of technicians and engineers maintaining their ships. The first time she saw someone else working on the Falcon, Rey leapt at him with her quarterstaff and scared the poor guy out of his boots.

People liked her here, though. That was nice. Everyone she met wanted to introduce themselves and talk to her about where she'd come from and where she'd been. It was just that there were too many of them, and all of their names started to run together in her mind.

All of this made it even easier to spend as much time as she could in the med bay with Finn. She did it because she missed him, of course, and she wanted to see him wake up, but it was just as appealing because the med bay was quiet. Apart from Dr Kalonia, and occasionally someone coming to get her for a meeting. And apart from Poe. But she didn't mind Poe.

Today, Poe was already there when Rey arrived. She walked in to see him with his head bent over Finn's, whisperering something like Finn could hear. Maybe he could. Poe looked up when she came in, with a slightly guilty look on his face.

"It's okay, you can keep going. I won't eavesdrop on your secrets," she said.

Poe started to say something, and then stopped, frowning at himself. It was weird, but kind of charming.

"Really, you don't have to be sorry," she added. "You can whisper secrets to Finn all you like."

"I just don't want to..." he shrugged. "Get between the two of you, I guess?"

"That's a bit hard to do when Finn isn't..."

"Yeah."

Rey took Finn's hand, the one closest to her, and they both lapsed into silence again. This was another nice thing about coming here. Even when Poe was here too, he didn't expect her to talk, and sometimes he didn't want to talk either. They spent about five minutes just holding Finn's hands, and watching him, and being there. Feeling.

Sometimes it was like a meditative state when Rey was here, clearing her mind of everything except Finn in this moment, and being here. It could also quickly turn frustrating when she found herself focusing to try to find any hint of movement under his eyelids, in any muscle of his body. Today she found her mind wandering, instead, to observing Poe.

He hadn't really made any special attempt to make her welcome. She'd seen less of Poe than she had of the women she shared a tent with for the first few days, or the woman with the quarters next to hers now that they had somewhere permanent to sleep, or even than the General. It's just that she was used to the idea of Poe. She'd heard about him from BB-8, from Finn, and at least she'd met him before she left for Ach-to. And he was here, next to Finn, right where Rey really wanted to be. It helped. It all helped.

"You okay there?" Poe asked.

Rey started and realised she'd been staring at him, noticing the shape of his eyebrows and the curl of his hair. "Yeah. Yes. I'm fine."

"Okay." Poe smiled, and let it go. "If you want to ask me something, let me know. I know you must have a lot of questions about how things are here and the General doesn't have time to answer them all."

"That's true." She chewed her lip. "I don't have a shortage of people who want to answer questions, though. There helpful people everywhere, that's the problem. Too many people."

"Too many people," Poe echoed. "Yeah, that's hard. That would be rough if you're used to it."

"So just..." She let go of Finn's hand and spread her arms wide, as if to bring in the whole Resistance in her gesture. "How do you deal with it? The way that there's just so... much?"

"You get used to it. That's no the most helpful answer, I know," he added. "It's just the only answer there is. Oh, and you start small. You get to know a few people, and find a place or a person that's comfortable, and then you move it outwards from there."

"The only place I'm comfortable is here. And the Falcon, I guess, with Chewbacca. Can this be a comfortable place? Here, with Finn? And you?"

"I'm a comfortable person?"

"Sure," Rey shrugged.

"That's nice. Thank you." Poe rubbed his thumb over the back of Finn's hand for a moment, deep in thought. "Whatever you need to feel comfortable. Comfortable's important."

"Really?" Rey frowned. "Whatever I need? Isn't what the Resistance needs more important?"

"Yeah, but that's not really a separate thing. In a war, we spend so much time in terrifying situations, that makes it even more important to keep people comfortable. We can't do everything, but we do what we can. So if there's anything you need, you can at least ask."

"I think I can take care of anything I need myself, though," she said, still frowning. She hadn't asked another person to give her something in a long, long time.

"Hey, if you can, then that's great." Poe smiled. "Just remember the rest of the Resistance is here, and we want to help, too."

"I can't ask that."

"Sure you can. You've done us a great service, and all we've done is send you off on missions."

"And given me food, and somewhere to sleep."

Poe shrugged. "That's all fair exchange. It's not like you owe us anything."

Rey thought she owed the Resistance quite a lot. They'd given her somewhere to sleep where she didn't have to stay on guard for beasts on the attack. For the first time she could remember, she didn't have to find a way to feed herself; the Resistance provided for her, for no other reason than she could fight with a lightsaber and wanted to fight for them.

And yet, her world had expanded a hundredfold in the last month. She was still trying to process it all, and there was only so much newness she could take.

"I don't know what to do with that," she said, tersely. Her hands had clenched into white-knuckled fists in the sheets. "How… I don't… I just can't take anything I can't pay for, okay?"

Poe looked at her for a long moment before he answered. "I don't really get it, but it sounds like I'm not helping. I'll give you and Finn some time alone for now, hey?"

"What?" Rey blinked at him, a cold trickle of guilt running down her neck. "No, hey, I didn't mean to make you leave."

"No, it's okay," Poe said, brushing his hands down on his pants. "I'll go. Don't worry about it. I'll see you around."

Rey nodded at him, firmly, but didn't trust herself to speak. She waited until Poe was gone before she slumped over the bed, her face buried in Finn's sheets.

"I don't know how anyone does this," she mumbled. "I don't know what to do here. I sit in on meetings and I work on the Falcon and sometimes they ask me questions about Kylo Ren but I just... I don't know. I don't know what they want me to know. I thought with you here, it would be okay being someone new, but it's just... not."

Finn didn't answer. Rey lifted her head for a moment to glance at his face, then lay back down on the bed. She didn't want to take his hand for fear that she'd squeeze it too hard. She couldn't quite be angry with him, but she wanted to be. She wanted to snarl and curse at him for not being here when she needed him.

It wasn't Finn's fault, though. It was Kylo Ren's. That's who she should really be angry at. For Finn, and for Han, and for the way Kylo Ren had disappeared and left the Resistance leaders constantly asking Rey if there wasn't something he had mentioned to her, something she sensed about him from the Force, something Luke had said that would give them any kind of clue about where he was and what he was planning.

There was one thing she could do, though. The lightsaber handle hung from her belt, never far from her hand any more. She hadn't had time to learn all that much from Luke, but what she had, she was going to practice again and again, relentlessly. There was plenty of empty space in this base to practice, too. She'd found a good spot on the lip of the crater yesterday. When the wind picked up, it was almost like she was back on Luke's island.

Rey stood, and then paused once more to look on Finn's sleeping face. She tried to call on everything Luke had taught her about controlling her mind; she let herself feel angry, and tried to let at least some of it slip away. Then she leaned over to kiss him on the forehead once more, and strode out the door without looking back.

  


Poe and the other Resistance leaders were getting a picture of the First Order's movements, piece by tiny piece. They know from Poe’s encounter that they were out there gathering strength again, but they’d gone back to ground since Poe had stumbled on their base on Bitros. Once the Resistance had settled, Poe led a small party back to Bitros to investigate. But there wasn't a trace of them left - no hint of where they’d based their operations there, and nothing of where they’d gone next.

“Alright there, sir?” Kare said, mildly, when Poe reached the end of their reconnaissance protocol and immediately kicked a tree.

“Fine,” he grunted.

“I don’t think the tree is a First Order operative, that’s all.”

“I know that,” he snapped, and then immediately felt silly when he looked up and saw her incredulous raised eyebrow. He closed his eyes and breathed for a moment.

“I know that,” he said, more calmly. “I just can’t help thinking that if I’d noticed they were here when I first arrived, we could have done something about it.”

“You mean, if you hadn’t been working too hard and skipping whole days of sleep? Or if they hadn’t actively been trying to hide from you and get away before you noticed?”

“Yeah, I know.”

“I know you know.” She paused, chewing her lip. “You noticed in time. You got out alive, and you got a hell of a lot of people out of D’Qar alive, too.”

“We all did,” he sighed. “Okay, yeah. We’ve got to go from there.”

It felt like there was nowhere to go from there, though. The Resistance was still regrouping itself after evacuation - he didn’t know whether they’d have the strength to fight them even if they found something. The New Republic was still in even more disarray than the Resistance, with some planets reeling in terror, some striking out in their own chaotic way. Some New Republic member planets had been eager to help and others had chased them off, but all the places Poe visited had that same sense of being lost.

Poe kept going, but he tried to rest more, remembering Kare's warning and how close he'd come to capture n Bitros. He flew out on scouting missions, again and again, but he kept them as short as he could. He hadn't realised how much he depended on working until the first time he told the General he was coming home after only one stop. His whole body was buzzing with adrenaline; he was more agitated about this than he had been about the rest of the mission, dreading a look of disappointment when he said he was coming back already. But it never came; all the General ever said was "Of course, Poe. We'll see you back home."

One morning after a trip he found himself awake early, before the rest of the Resistance was up. To his surprise, Poe found he wasn't wiped out after a mission for once; he felt as alert and ready to go as if he'd just had a week's holiday. At the break of dawn, though, that left some question as to what the hell he should _do_ with all that energy. He could go down to the mess hall, but the cooks tended to chase him away if he turned up before they were ready for service. He headed up the rock walls instead, following trails where they existed and climbing hand over hand when they didn’t. He’d pulled himself over the lip of a cave and was just taking in the view of the dawning light behind the other side of the crater when a sound behind him made his whole body freeze in fear.

Slowly he turned around, not even sure what he was fearing would be there. What he saw, deeper in the cave, was the flashing of blue light. The sound, he realised, was the hum of a lightsaber. The light danced, froze and danced again as Rey went through the motions. He didn’t want to interrupt, but he crept a bit closer, fascinated by the way she moved.

To Poe, the Jedi had been bedtime stories. Fantastic, wonderful, terribly important to the fate of the galaxy - but bedtime stories, all the same. Ships were real to him, and soldiers, and blaster fire. Lightsabers were things he only heard about - until he’d encountered Kylo Ren, and that experience was far less magical than his mother’s stories about Luke Skywalker had led him to expect.

Rey, though, moved nothing like Ren. Her weapon had the same buzzing sound as it swept through the air, but Rey was a picture of control and grace, unlike Ren’s wild fury. Her movements were precise, every step perfectly placed. As Poe crept closer, he realised she was wearing a blindfold, too.

He wasn't planning to interrupt her, just watch for a few minutes and then sneak away, maybe ask her about training later. She paused as soon as he crept closer, though, still facing the back of the cave, and said "Poe?"

"Uh, yeah. Good morning." He took a few steps towards her before he thought better of it. "I'm here. Behind you. I don't want to freak you out or anything, I was just doing some climbing before breakfast and I heard you."

"You're not going to freak me out," she said, and started walking towards him. She was still wearing the blindfold.

"You're kind of freaking _me_ out, though."

"What? Oh, this?" She pulled the blindfold up at one side and winked. "It's okay, I'm not going to walk into you or anything. I know exactly where you are."

"I was more worried about you tripping," he said, picking gingerly over the rock floor.

"I trip sometimes, but I'm getting better." She took off her blindfold and sheathed the lightsaber.

"Oh, hey, don't stop because of me!"

"Nah, it's okay." She walked past him and sat at the mouth of the cave, her legs dangling over the edge of the rock. She patted the ground behind her and Poe sat down, too.

"Okay, cool. As long as I didn't mess up your training." He paused. "I was going to say sorry for coming up here, but I'm kind of glad I did because that was really cool to see."

Rey smiled at him with a smirk that scrunched up her nose. "I'm glad you came up. Most of the time I don't know whether I'm getting anywhere with the Force, but if I could tell you were there even while I was blindfolded and waving a lightsaber around, I'm doing pretty well."

  
  


It had taken a matter of hours for Rey to trust Finn, and to love him. It wasn't so easy to get attached to anyone else. Finn had been one person; the Resistance was made up of hundreds of people, and while they were all very friendly, they did start to blur together so it was hard to get attached to any one person. Even with the people she started to recognise and remember, it felt hard to get close. Without the urgency of battle, their conversations stayed so simple - the food in the mess that day, the weather, or questions about where Rey had come from. Rey's thoughts, though, were deeper and darker than that, consumed with fear about what she was supposed to be doing, whether she could ever do this properly, and what was going to happen about Finn. Talking about the weather just felt like she was being a fake.

Rey didn't get open up to Poe as easily as she did to Finn, not by a long way. They sometimes met while visiting the comatose Finn in the med bay, and that alone meant she saw more of him than anyone else on base. She had known Poe now for three times as long as she'd known Finn before Starkiller, and she still hadn't told him nearly as much about herself, but at least with Poe she didn't feel like she had to put on a good face. He talked about the hard parts of his own trip to Jakku, and asked about how she felt and not just where she'd been. Even when they were silent, it felt more real than the conversations she had anywhere else.

"What happens if he never wakes up?"

It's a thought that's been rattling around in Rey's head ever since she came back. If she'd been unconscious for this long on Jakku - well, nobody would stay unconscious for this long on Jakku, they'd be dead. That Finn's been out so long already made it seem as if he had died, too.

She hasn't ask the doctors, because they seem like they'd answer a different question to the one Rey means. They tell her about Finn's condition, and their plans for treatment if things don't work out this time, and things like that. They wouldn't necessarily go to the thing she really needs to know: _what will happen to me if Finn never wakes up? What will I do?_

"So you know the prognosis from the doctors. Healing from the kind of wounds he has takes a long time, they had to put him under deep, and there's no telling whether he'll wake up before he's done healing."

Rey nodded. "But there's also no telling whether he'll wake up once he's healed, right? He's been unconscious for so long already."

"We know his brain is just still fine, so we know he can wake up. We just don't know when he will."

"Yes, but..." Rey lapsed into silence for a moment as she searched for the next thing to say. She was picking at the hems of her sleeves; Poe had noticed she almost always did that when she was thinking. "We don't know when he will wake up, which means we don't know if he ever will, right?"

Poe licked his lips again; they were uncomfortably dry. "Yeah, you're right. He might be asleep for a long time."

"Forever?"

"There's no such thing as forever," Poe said, with a sad smile.

"There's a forever in the Force," Rey said, after a while. "That's what Luke says, anyway. We're all part of the Force from the beginning of our lives, and everyone remains a part of the Force even in death. The Force continues."

"Yeah, there is," Poe conceded. "Even if Finn dies without waking up, or if we die without seeing him wake up, we'll meet him again in the Force. But it comes back to the same question." He touched the back of her hand, gently, giving her space to pull away. She didn't. "I think what you're really asking is, we could live a long, long time waiting for Finn to wake up, so what do we do while we wait?"

"What we're doing now. We fight the First Order."

"Sure. But what about when they're gone? And we both have at least some downtime. What do you do when you're not fighting, and what do you want to do that you're putting off because you're waiting for Finn to wake up?"

Rey had a way of looking through people, almost inspecting them. She made no effort to hide when she was examining someone. Right now she was narrowing her eyes as she watched Poe, and Poe could track her gaze as it ran over his eyes, his mouth, the set of his shoulders and his hand on hers. It was made him uncomfortable but he also felt a prickling at the back of his neck. With a start, he wondered if she was learning to examine people's minds now, too - but maybe it was just that he liked being the subject of Rey's intense attention.

"Are there things you're waiting to do, when Finn wakes up?"

"Yeah," Poe said. It comes out rougher than he expected, his voice gravelly and low. He clears his throat, and tries again. "Yeah, there are. But some things, I know I don't want to wait forever."

"So what will you do?"

"I won't come to visit him so often. Maybe I'll stop coming at all." The roughness in his voice is back, and he clearing his throat won't stop it this time. "Maybe you think it's terrible that I'd do that, but I know I can't spend my whole life waiting for something that might not happen. One day I'll have to stop waiting and go out and live."

Rey is quiet for a long time. Poe is afraid that she's angry that he'd think of abandoning Finn. He can understand that. He'll stand by his words, though. He knows he could die any day in this fight, and while he likes being by Finn's side, while he loves Finn, he's already spending less time here than he used to, and more with his friends and his work. Waiting can be hopeless work, and Poe needs hope.

  


At first, Rey had just been lurking at the edges of the Resistance and observing, like she was scoping out a new wreckage site for parts. Or sizing up a new potential buyer to figure out how to bargain for the best deal. Now that she'd broached the biggest question with Poe - the big, terrifying, what-if-Finn-never-comes-back question, it made it so much easier to just ask.

"Why do we have meetings like this?" Rey asked, after leaving a command meeting one day. "Everyone just crowding in a circle around the middle of the room. It seems messy. Why do it that way?"

"A couple of reasons. The Resistance is military, but it's not really traditional military. We see the value in listening to people who aren't generals."

Rey frowned. "I don't know what any of that means."

"Oh, right. You never got soldiers on Jakku?"

"Sure, but they were usually just sand-shredders who acted like they owned the place even though they wouldn't last a week in my shoes. I've scavenged enough fighter ships to prove it."

"Oh, okay. Well... soldiers work for military forces, which operate by a chain of command. One person at the top has power, and whoever's below them is trained to obey."

"That sounds a lot like the First Order."

Now it was Poe's turn to frown. "It's different."

"They expect everyone to follow orders from command, too."

"Yeah, but in the Republic, soldiers are allowed to just leave."

Rey seemed to accept that as a justification. "Okay, but why the meetings with everyone crammed in a room?"

"Well, like I said, the Resistance is a military, but it's kind of rogue military. We don't find it the best idea to follow all the usual military rules."

"So the meetings..."

"Well, when you're working like this, the leaders sometimes don't have all the information. Sometimes we're looking at problems that they've never seen before, too. Sometimes ordinary soldiers have the best ideas or information. That's why these meetings are usually open, so that anyone can come and add their ideas." He paused. "That, and I think it's tradition."

"You just said the Resistance didn't follow tradition!"

"I did. I meant a different tradition, from the Rebel Alliance. They came together quickly, and in secret. Most of their meetings were run the way ours are, with a small group of people around a table, regardless of rank or status. Luke Skywalker sat in on one of those meetings on his first day in the Alliance, and he'd never even been in the military before."

The mention of Luke brought Rey up short. It was weird to think of Luke as being fresh and new to any of this. Everyone here spoke of him with such reverence; they were so desperate to find him and see him again. It was hard to think of him as being like her, coming in as an outsider.

"It was more than thirty years ago," Poe said, gently. "In a war, people change a lot in a week."

  


Rey knew about sex. She hadn't had a lot of opportunities for it on Jakku, where she'd barely been able to meet people of her own age or species, but she knew her body. She was very young when she learned she had to listen to her body to survive; noticing its signals could be the difference between life and death. When she was thirteen or fourteen and her body was changing, when she sometimes felt hot even in the cold desert nights and felt a longing for touch in places she'd never given much thought to before, she paid attention and tried to work out what she needed. She didn't have many people to talk to about human puberty, and even fewer she could ask about sex, but she experimented and tried a few things and worked out what satisfied her needs. Masturbation became just another part of the routine of keeping her body working. Less predictable and understandable than eating and drinking, but more pleasurable than forcing old Imperial ration packs down her throat every day.

She'd had sex with other people twice. The first time when she was sixteen, with a boy her own age from one of the Sacred Villages. Until then, Rey had never even thought of having sex with someone else; of the people she usually saw on Jakku, there was nobody she had any desire to even stand too close to. Meeting someone her own age was novel enough, but when he approached her shyly and explained what he wanted to do, it struck her as a revelation. She practically dragged him onto her speeder and back to her hideaway.

The sex itself was underwhelming, neither of them really knowing what to do with another person. He put his fingers inside her first, but it didn't feel all that good and on that basis Rey completely vetoed the idea of having his dick inside her at all. She was still desperate for touch, though, and when he nosed his way down her torso and pressed his tongue to her clit, it felt electric. (Even if he wasn't nearly as adept at getting her off as she was herself.) Rey tried to return the favour but found she didn't like having his dick in her mouth, and gave up after a few minutes. He didn't have time to look disappointed, though, before she wrapped a hand around him and jerked, hard. She hadn't liked everything, but she found she liked watching his face get red and the way he struggled to form words as he got closer. She liked feeling the way he pulsed in her hand.

The second time was with Quorr and Caillen, two off-worlders she ran into while sneaking around the shipyards when she was seventeen and wishing she had more chances to fly real ships instead of old Republic sims. She saw them pressed together against the side of their ship, their mouths against each others' and all she could think was _I want that_. She crept closergave a soft gasp when she saw one of them slip a hand into the other's flight suit, moving down to just the place Rey liked to touch herself.

Scavengers rarely asked for what they wanted. They bargained, or traded, not showing the weakness of outright asking. But Rey had nothing to trade that mattered, here, and she _wanted_ too badly to simply walk away. So she stepped out from her hiding place and asked, cautiously, if she could join them.

Quorr was welcoming; Caillen was uncertain. Despite how much she wanted, Rey felt uncertain when they took her into their sleeping quarters, with the way Caillen was looking apprehensive and Quorr, despite xyr welcoming, knowing smile, was a species Rey had never encountered before. Rey didn't really know where to start. But Quorr lay down, and invited them both to join xyr, and said, "Show her what I like, Cail." Soon Rey was raking her fingers down Quorr's scales along with Caillen, and then Rey's hand was entwined with the tentacle-like appendages below Quorr's belly, and the breathy groans from Quorr's mouths had Rey too entranced to feel nervous any more. By the time Quorr's moans turned to shouts, Caillen had her whole body pressed up against Rey's back, and her hand against Rey's clit, and Rey took all her apprehension back. This was the best idea she'd ever had.

On Ach-to, Rey sometimes thought of Finn when she touched herself. Not in any great detail, not a blow by blow of how it might go if they had sex, but just impressions. She thought about how his skin would feel against hers, how he would touch her differently to the way she touched herself. She thought of those times he'd grabbed her hand, how his hands were bigger and warmer than hers, and how it would be nice if he touched her hand. It felt good to come while she was remembering Finn's smile.

She couldn't do it after she saw him unconscious in the med bay, though. It didn't feel right thinking about Finn and sex any more, it didn't feel good, it just felt sad. Occasionally Poe came into her mind when she was close to coming, his voice and his confidence and his eyes. But mostly, she tried to think of nothing at all.

  


Poe wasn't used to peacetime anymore, even a peace that was just a temporary truce. This was the first time he'd fought in a real war, but he'd been preparing for it all his life and he'd given everything he had to the fight against the First Order. Now they were nowhere to be found, and between scouting and recruiting missions there was nothing to d but wait and relax. Poe was itching for a fight, and there were none to be found.

This is what found him trailing after Rey one morning, and asking, "Can I spar with you?"

She stared at him. "You fight with a blaster."

"Oh." He glanced at his holster. "Well, it would be good for me to learn something else, right? We trained in a couple of combat forms at the Academy. I could use the practice."

"Well, I don't have a spare lightsaber." She raised an eyebrow. "They teach you how to use a quarterstaff at flight school?"

"Sure," Poe lied. He and some of his friends on Yavin had fought each other with branches when they wanted to pretend they had lightsabers. That had to be pretty similar.

"Okay then," Rey said, amused. "Follow me."

They went back to Rey's practice spot, where Poe had once seen her blindfolded, and she knocked him on his back in thirty seconds flat.

It felt fantastic.

"Yeah, lots of training in staff fighting there, I can tell." Rey loomed over him, smirking.

Poe groaned. "You could at least pretend to be worried."

"You want to call it off and go back down? Go watch a holo instead?"

"Nope." Poe got up slowly, too slowly to ever win this fight, but he was up and armed again in a moment, and ready to fight. The shock of pain was just what he'd been looking for, the adrenaline flooding him in the kind of rush he'd been craving. "A couple more rounds and it'll all come back to me."

Rey didn't ask him again. "If you say so," she said, and knocked him down again.

  


Poe says that if Finn still doesn't wake up, they'll both eventually move on. Luke says it's okay to have attachments, that they're a source of strength, not a weakness. Rey thinks they're both wrong. She spends so much time thinking about Finn that it distracts her all the time, and she can't imagine it ever stopping.

"You'll make other friends," said Poe. "Finn isn't the only friend you'll ever have. He might not even be the most important friend in your life forever."

Rey was trying to make other friends, or at least, other people were trying to make friends with her. Now that she was back on the Resistance base, other pilots and soldiers had been inviting her to eat and drink with them when they were off duty. Sometimes she went, but often she just wanted to be with Finn, or to sit alone and meditate. (And fail to meditate very well, because she kept thinking about Finn." Some of her new friends, like Jess and Kare, seemed hurt when she told them she'd rather be alone, but she didn't know what else to tell them.

"I don't know if I can make other friends, not really."

"It might feel difficult, but I really think you can."

"I know I can say the right things and spend time with people," she said, frustrated. "I don't know if I can..." she trailed off, and made a sharp gesture at Finn's comatose body. She couldn't get the rest of the words out.

Poe nodded, though, as if that was all she needed to say. "Is it that you don't want to make friends with people and lose them?"

"It'll just keep happening." Rey hunched her shoulders and hugged herself. Maybe this was too much. She shouldn't have started this conversation, she should have gone to meditate on it and keep this to herself. "People leave you or they die and it hurts, and is that just how it goes? Over and over?"

Poe thought about the friends he left behind when he deserted the Republic Army for the Resistance, and the friends he'd lost in battle, and losing his mother. "Yes. I guess it is. But you treasure the good that you have, I guess, and you keep going."

They both wore armour when they went outside, Poe realised. His was charisma and bravado, and Rey's was silence. But here, they'd started to let their masks go and let all their vulnerabilities show. They sat by Finn's bedside and talked almost despite themselves, because they were both worried and there was someone else there to listen.

"My mother died when I was nine."

"Okay," Rey said. After a moment's silence, she said, "Sorry, is there a thing I'm supposed to say? There probably is, right?"

"Nah, it's okay." Poe gave her one of the tired grins she was starting to like so much. "People usually say 'that's terrible' and 'I'm sorry for your loss' and that they can't imagine how hard it must be, but I think you and I are past the point where we have to follow the script."

"I can imagine it," Rey shrugged. "My parents left me when I was five."

"I can't imagine _that_. I still had my dad, and it was terrible, and I didn't know what life was gonna be like without her, but I still had people to look after me." He coughed, and then cleared his throat. "The thing Is, it was really, really hard, and really sad, and I didn't know how to keep going. But eventually I just did. Because you want to live, I guess. And as bad as this is..."

He looked back towards Finn. Rey's used to watching this, now; she knows the way the lines at the corners of Poe's eyes crinkle up when he looks at Finn, the way his eyes look sad but the corners of his mouth turn up in just a hint of a smile, and she realises how much Poe loves him.

"This is bad, and it'll stay bad for a while. If Finn dies without us ever being able to talk again, it will hurt so much. But I've felt it before, and I know I can survive."

"That's the thing," Rey said. The words just rushed out, and she realised she was about to cry and stared at her hands. "I've survived it once before and I know how bad it is. My parents left and it sucked and then Han died and I know how much it hurts and I don't think I can so I... I'd better just..."

"I know," Poe said, and she gratefully lapsed into silence. "I know."

  


When the First Order reappeared, they did so with a vengeance. In the absence of a Resistance target, they went after the last known Resistance ally: the people of D'Qar.

D'Qar hadn't been Poe's home, exactly. The Resistance was home, but Poe had brought them with him. Everything he loved was here, not back on a forest planet in the Ilenium system. It had been like home, though, a lot like the planet he grew up on, and even though he had only been there for six months, Poe was attached to the place. The thought of the First Order settling in there, drinking from the lake he used to swim in, and kidnapping D'Qarian children to train up as Stormtroopers; it was all sickening to him.

And yet, underneath the horror, he was excited. When the General had announced that they were back on D'Qar and the full Resistance squadron were going to launch an attack, he felt relieved. He'd been trying his hardest to work for the Resistance within the parameters they had now, but he couldn't deny he'd been feeling useless in the holding pattern they were stuck in, waiting for the Order to show themselves. Here, at last, was something he could do.

"This should be straightforward," the General said, addressing a full gathering of the X-Wing fighter corps. "You make as many firing runs as you can do, targeting other ships and ammunition, until it looks as if the Order's return fire poses danger to you or your squadmates. When you reach that point, you pull up and retreat. We'll have a Mon Calamari starship in orbit to support you in case of emergencies. Questions?"

Poe had no questions. He just wanted to get up in the air again as soon as possible. He'd tried his hardest to work with the situation they had, serve the Resistance as best he could while they were still looking for an enemy to fight, but he'd missed this. This was what he was really here for. If only they could get through the conversation and get in the air and fight.

"General." A hand shot up immediately. "Targeting ships and weapons only? They've already started the invasion and made a ground attack. There'll be a lot more down there."

"This is an opening," she replied, crisply. "We've been in an effective ceasefire with the First Order for nearly two months now. No, it wasn't intentional, but it's the situation we've found ourselves in. I don't want us to be the ones to reopen hostilities with a high body count."

Poe frowned. That wasn't what they'd discussed at the planning meeting... but then, he hadn't paid much attention to the detail, had he? He just wanted to go.

"Isn't it better to take out as many of them as we can?"

"Our political situation has changed," the General said, with steel in her voice this time. "We are not what we used to be. Neither is the First Order, and neither is any government in this galaxy. People are afraid everywhere. They're especially afraid on D'Qar. They used to house us, and our being there put their planet in danger. Now they're housing the First Order, and who knows what they're doing to the local populations? I don't want us to be a source for our former allies."

She paused for a moment, as she sensed the rising noise and tension in the room. She let the pilots murmur among themselves for a few minutes, and then she spoke up again.

"I hear your concerns. Yes, we're playing it safe and only going after weapons, not people. We can attack the First Order at any time, but this is the only first strike we get on a confused galaxy that doesn't know who to trust and only sees a terrifying swathe of destruction where we've clashed with them before. Let's make a clear statement that we're not putting up with the First Order, but we're not out to hurt anyone, either."

  


They emerged from the skies above D'Qar right above the First Order base ops, and struck without hesitation. Poe led his squadron into battle with short, sharp orders and an all-in dive. He swooped down as low over the enemy base as he could, with his friends and teammates close behind, guns out and all blazing.

Rey's job was simple - stay high, and fire on any TIE fighters. She and Chewbacca had to toss a coin to decide who would shoot and who would steer, and she won the pilot's seat.

"This is the good result! I fight hand to hand! I'd never even picked up a gun until two months ago."

He gave a long, undulating growl.

"I don't care if Han usually did the shooting, you've still got plenty more experience at aiming and firing a gun than I do."

She was grateful for it. They were both great pilots, but while Chewie could have flown the Falcon with all the dexterity Rey was showing, there was no way she could shoot with the accuracy he had. As she soared in huge circles over the battleground, Chewbacca ruthlessly shot down every TIE fighter that flew in range, barely ever missing a shot.

Their numbers were mounting, though. Their first firing run had obliterated most of the fighter craft already at this base, but there must have been another nearby. Two formations' worth had already appeared from over a nearby ridge, and Rey sensed there were more to come.

"They keep sending out more of them," Rey said on the comms to Chewbacca. "Should I say something? I can't tell anyone to pull up and leave, but I can say something, right?"

Chewbacca's answering roar was full of frustration and battle lust, but there was fear, too. Rey knew what reluctance sounded like in his voice, and she knew how his words shaped a 'yes'. As she switched comm lines, telling the wing commanders about the increasing fighter numbers, she saw a whole new wave of TIE fighters break the horizon and speed towards them.

  


Poe heard Rey's report but didn't register, too caught up in the game of chasing and firing, taking out as many First Order bastards as he could get in the sky, and as many static targets on the ground when he wasn't in a dogfight. He didn't think to give the command to retreat himself, but he did register the command from another squad leader when it came. He'd just finished an attack run on some ground targets and pulled up, veering around as he repeated the order to the rest of his squad to retreat, get back to base, that this one was done for now.

He was at the back of the pack of retreating X-wing fighters, and still had a battlefield to cross before he was clear to get out of the atmosphere and take the jump. It should be easy enough. He had more than enough skill to dodge a sky with twenty or so enemy combatants, even though he could see that just as Rey warned, there were another hundred approaching from behind him.

Poe wasn't ready for this fight to be over, though. He'd waited so long to do something, and they'd barely been in the air for twenty minutes. Just one more, he thought, as he climbed the air, like he was eight again and his parents were calling him to climb down out of the tree, or at least stop climbing so high so he wouldn't hurt himself if he fell. Just five more minutes.

When a TIE fighter started shooting up towards him, and Poe had to swerve to avoid it, it seemed too good to be true.

"Oh, you want to play like that," he muttered to himself, and smiled as he spun in place and turned back around, ready to fire.

  


Rey saw the TIE scream past Poe, and Poe giving chase in return, and her heart caught in her throat. Rey saw the scene unfolding before her, moments before it even happened. Long enough to reel in horror from the intensity of it, and long enough for her mind to flash back to what Luke told her once: that sometimes the Force will show you terrible things, and that doesn’t make them true.

She had just enough time to think of those things before she hit the upper atmosphere, and the comms channel erupted with panicked questions about how badly Poe was hit.

  


Poe was spinning, and then he was falling, and then he was pulling at his controls with a white-knuckled grip to get his ship flying straight and true again. Thank the Force for a lifetime of preparing for bitter fights and risky accidents, training his body to take over even when his mind was still reeling in terror. He halted the fall, leaned into the spin to get control and halt the sickening motion, and had himself pointing towards the sky again before he knew it.

He was still heading out of D'Qar's atmosphere. But he was going way, way too slowly.

"What's the damage, BB-8?"

[Hyperdrive gone,] BB-8 said, crisply.

"Okay, so we can't jump straight out. That's okay, we can get out of this atmosphere and on to the Echo and then they can drive us home, right?"

[sure, except your fuel cells are damaged as well.]

Poe swore more loudly than he had since Kylo Ren was sneering in his face. "How much power have we got? How long can we keep going?"

[to the carrier ship.]

"Well, that's okay then."

[probably.]

"That's less okay!"

[sorry. i'll reroute everything i can.]

Poe swore again. He had enemy fighters to escape, limited fuel and a radio channel that was full of scared fighters asking how he was doing instead of retreating to safety. At least the latter one was easy enough to deal with.

"I'm still flying, I'll be fine," he said to his worried crew. "Keep going, get back home, go. I'll be right there with you."

And then he watched with some relief as one by one, his comrades' ships winked out into hyperspace. Poe just kept flying the long way, up and up, hoping that the enemy fighters had dropped off behind him even without Rey there to pick them off as they came for him. Up and up, until he was out of the atmosphere and the rescue ship was there winking on the horizon. One potential cause of death conquered. Now he just had to beat empty space.

He just had to make it back to the Echo of Hope, Poe told himself, gritting his teeth. All his attention was focused on bringing his X-wing in home, now. With a damaged fuel cell, he didn't know how long he could keep flying. He didn't even know how long the oxygen generators could keep him breathing. He didn't even spend his breath talking to BB-8, although the droid seemed to understand. BB-8 just kept crooning and beeping encouragement despite Poe's silence, urging him on as he tried to keep the juddering ship steady as it crossed the long, slow gap towards the Hope.

They could come and get me, he thought, desperately. They could turn around and fucking come and get me, come on, you rustbucket, come on, keep going.

There were no First Order ships in pursuit, but he hadn't been keeping a very close eye on the response. There wasn't much point. His choice was between using the last of his power to get to safety, and using some of it to fire on an enemy combatant instead. If he got into a dogfight out here, he'd as good as signed his own death certificate.

 _Come on,_ he urged his ship, silently. The Hope was slowly turning in the black sky ahead of him, and maybe it was finally noticing it had a slow-moving straggler and coming back for him, too. That was something. Even with a friendly ship in sight, he felt saddened that he was stuck here. It felt like being stranded on Jakku again, crawling hand over hand towards civilisation, knowing that there were other people out there that had no way of reaching them. He might be okay, he might not, but all he knew for sure right now was that space was lonely.

Calm down, he tried to tell himself. Couldn't afford to get upset right now, couldn't afford to hyperventilate. Might be enough recycled air to get him to the end. Might not. Had to conserve it any way he could.

He was so focused on the trying to keep calm part that he didn't notice another ship approaching until it was nearly upon them. He startled, wasting a mouthful of precious air in his panic, but it wasn't an enemy TIE fighter. Not yet, anyway. Rising up beneath him was the familiar, reassuring shape of the Millennium Falcon.

"Hey, Poe," her voice came crackling over the radio. She was going for casual but he could hear the cracks in her voice already. "Are you stuck? Can I do anything to help?"

Thank the Force for BB-8, and for Rey being a pilot who understood binary. Poe kept his breathing steady and his eyes fixed on the Echo of Hope, and let BB-8 do the explaining. It burbled at Rey about oxygen and power levels, and keeping their ship going. Reassurance didn't come naturally to droids, though, and BB-8's blunt recitation of facts and probabilities juts had the tremor in Rey's voice getting worse.

"I like that you're here," Poe whispered, when he could hear her reaching the point of panic.

That was all he said. He couldn't waste another breath. He tried to put everything he could into it; the way he was scared, the way just knowing there was another ship right nearby him helped, somehow. He was fighting the edge of panic, now; he couldn't stop wondering if his breath was coming shorter, the oxygen running out, but he couldn't think too much and let himself panic because hyperventilating would just make it worse.

The ship was getting closer and closer, though, the engines still firing in spite of the lack of fuel, and he was starting to be able to hope. When the Echo of Hope was filling his whole vision, he thought surely by now if he passed out at least they'd be able to resuscitate him without too much trouble. When he passed into the docking bay, still conscious, his hands were shaking so hard that it was double the work as usual to make sure he landed his ship safely.

But then he felt it settle in the artificial gravity with a familiar groan, and let out a groan of his own. He snapped the cockpit open, ignoring the Falcon coming in to land beside him, and breathed in the beautiful, gross recycled air. For a good five minutes he just lay there, enjoying the air, knowing how close he'd come to that being the last mission. He didn't even respond to BB-8's chirps, first excited and then increasingly worried.

"It's okay, I'm okay," he said. He stared at his hands. They'd almost stopped shaking.

[you'd better get out before everyone else thinks you're dead, then]

He finally twigged to what was going on in the rest of the hangar bay. Other Resistance officials emerging from the body of the ship, a Wookie howl, and the sound of Rey shouting his name.

"Hey," he said, over the edge of the cockpit. He had to sit there a moment before he climbed down, he felt like he was shaking too hard, like his legs might not hold him up. "Did you miss me?"

"Get down here," Rey said, fiercely.

Rey stuck to his side the whole way back. Chewbacca went back to tend to the Falcon, the medic aboard the Hope checked him over and declared him unharmed, cleared to go back to his usual duties immediately, and Rey never left his side. She didn't speak much, but her mouth was a firm, serious line. She was closed off, but Poe could tell she was feeling a lot - he just didn't know a lot of what. Anger? Worry? She touched him sometimes, tentatively at first like she was worried he was going to fall apart, then more and more possessively. By the time they landed on Chandrila and Poe marched into command to give his mission report, Rey was practically leaning on him.

General Organa took one look at them and told them to go to bed.

"Yes, both of you," she said, sternly. "And rest."

"No need to tell me that," Poe said. His legs weren't shaking any more, but when the shakes subsided he was tired down to his bones.

He wasn't really surprised when Rey followed him back to his quarters.

"I'm not going to break, you know," he said, as he shut the door behind them. "You can stay here and watch me sleep if you want, but -"

"Don't do that again," she said, her voice soft and dangerous, and then she pinned him against the wall and kissed him, hard.

Poe had thought about this. He didn't let himself think about it for long; Rey was young, and she was vulnerable. She was probably in love with Finn and so was Poe. In every possible way, it was a bad idea. So he hadn't let himself dwell on how he'd come to love her directness or her piercing stare, the way she still wore her home-made clothes and the strength and confidence that came from every movement she made, like she'd already been through hell and knew she could survive anything. He grew to cherish all the rare occasions when they hugged, and he got to hold her, but he made an effort not to think of her any more than that, vowed never to ask for something she didn't offer.

Now, though, this was Rey's body pressed up against his from shoulder to knee. He pulled her closer, his arms around her waist. He could feel all of her, soft and strong, a contrast but not a contradiction. She pushed him harder against the wall, until he was sandwiched between Rey and a hard place so that he couldn't have gotten out even if he wanted to. Her mouth was hot on his, and firm, and fierce. She kissed greedily, like she was starving, none of the hesitation that she'd shown back on the Hope when she treated him like he was about to break. Rey kissed like she was starving, and Poe felt like he was drowning, overwhelmed with the surprise and with how suddenly and desperately he wanted to keep kissing her and didn't ever want to stop.

"Rey," he said, when she gave him a moment to breath. He meant to say something else, to stop this so that they could talk about it, but he found he couldn't stop saying her name. "Rey, Rey, you're so... Rey, this is..."

"I can't lose you," she whispered, her lips still brushing against his. "I can't, you understand?"

"Rey, I don't... oh..."

She was still pressed up against him, but she'd shifted her stance slightly and now she was going for his jumpsuit, unbuttoning the fly at his groin. Poe felt himself flush; he still hadn't showered after that whole long mission. On top of the usual unpleasant smells of metal and stale air, he was reeking with nervous sweat. But he didn't want her to stop, and didn't tell her to, just clutched at her shoulder and gasped as she pushed her hand through the layers of clothing to close around his dick. At the first stroke, she

"Wait, wait. Rey. Wait." Poe gasped. He put one hand on her shoulder to push her gently away, just far enough that he could look her in the eye, and with the other he stilled her hand where it was working on his dick. "Rey, are you sure you want to do this?"

"Yes." She almost groaned it out, as if she'd said yes a hundred times before and couldn't believe he was still checking. Then her eyes went wide and the colour drained out of her face. "Wait, are you saying you don't want to?"

The hand that was cupping him went still, and then she started to wriggle it out of his pants. Poe groaned, and he tried and failed to keep from jerking his hips, still chasing her touch. He held her wrist again, this time to keep her touching him.

"I really, really want to," he panted. "I just, this is really sudden, and having sex with your flight mates can be a really bad idea sometimes, and I need to know that you know what you're getting into."

She gripped the front of his flight suit with both hands. "You almost died today. I like you and I almost died and... and what more of a mess can we get into?"

What Poe hears, though, is _Because I didn't get a chance with Finn. Because I don't want to miss that chance with you._

"Oh." Poe touched her hair, then cupped her jaw, stroking her cheek with his thumb. She leaned into him and closed her eyes. "No, I get it."

"Please," she said. "Just... please. Can we just do this? If I want to, and you want to, can't we just do it?"

"Okay," breathed. "Yeah, okay."

Rey smiled just a little, with a bit of her earlier smirk coming back as she pushed her hand into Poe's suit again and squeezed. "Just okay?"

"Please," he gasped, "Please, Rey."

She started stroking him and his head thunked back against the wall again. He breathed easier for a moment, with the relief of touch and movement, and then breathed heavier with his growing arousal. And also, he realised, with a growing cramp in his thighs.

"Hey," Poe said, hoarsely. "I definitely want to keep going, but do you think we could stop long enough for me to take this thing off completely?"

"Oh!" Rey's eyes widened with awe. "Oh, right. Yeah! Yes, that would definitely be good."

"Cool," Poe said, and started undoing the rest of the buttons. "Also, I don't know if you noticed, but I have a bed in here."

  


They stayed together in Poe's bunk that night. They didn't discuss it, just lay together, holding each other, still all filthy and battle-worn until they fell asleep. Rey wasn't going to leave after that, and Poe wasn't going to make her leave.

Poe woke to find himself curled around Rey. His first thought was how comfortable this felt, spooning his front against her back. His second thought was that he was glad they'd done this, and a little guilty, and more than a little worried about what happened next. His third thought was that he still hadn't had a shower.

He tried to get up, to see if he could at least clean some of the filth off himself before Rey woke up, but she clung to him. When he tried to pry her arms away, she opened her eyes and glared at him, grumpy and unimpressed. "Where are you going?"

"I just want to shower." He kissed her forehead. "Come on, I stink."

"I don't care."

Poe stared in disbelief. "No, really, I stink."

"Yeah, well, so do I. I smell most of the time." She yawned. "I dunno, I try to shower since you guys do it all the time, but I'm not that used to it."

Poe smiled. "You could come with me."

"Why?"

"Why? Because we'll both be wet and naked and it's fun, that's why."

"It's such a waste of water," Rey said, but her eyes followed Poe as he walked naked into the 'fresher, and soon she was in there with him, both of them naked and soapy and sliding their hands over each other in the small space. By the time they'd both scrubbed themselves clean, Poe had also gotten on his knees licking at Rey while she gasped and clenched her fingers in his wet hair. Her legs trembled when she came, and Poe held tight to her hips to keep her upright.

It had been three months, now, since Finn fought Kylo Ren and had his spine slashed and didn't come out of his anaesthetic coma. Neither of them talked about what they would do, or what would change, if one day Finn woke up. It might never happen. They couldn't wait forever.

  


In some ways, sleeping with Poe changed absolutely nothing. Rey got up and ate breakfast that morning like normal, and then she checked in on Chewbacca and started the inventory of post-battle checks to do on the Falcon, just like she'd been planning to do otherwise. In every sense, it was an average day.

It was only when their paths converged on the med bay at the end of the afternoon, and Rey found herself holding one of Finn's hands while Poe held the other, that it started to feel strange.

Rey knew what she was doing when she went to Poe's bed. She might have been driven by fear and worry, she might have acted rashly and not thought it through, but she knew what she was doing. She didn't want to wait for Finn forever, and the only thing that had stopped her from doing with earlier was that her attracted to Poe had grown so slowly that it took her by surprise. When she saw him fall on D'Qar, she knew exactly what she wanted to do.

But she hadn't been prepared for how complicated it all felt. She hadn't slept with someone who was going to stick around before; there had been no showers together and breakfasts the next morning at Niima Outpost, no seeing her lovers around the desert and feeling her heart fill to bursting with the memories of the night before. On Jakku, she'd never felt happy and at the same time felt that something was wrong.

She'd decided not to wait for Finn, so why did she still feel bad about it?

"I feel like I'm leaving him out," she said, at last.

Poe nodded. "Yeah, I know what you mean."

"Oh," she said, with relief. "Oh, good."

"Did you think I wouldn't understand?" Poe asked, with that half-smile he had sometimes. It hadn't always had this effect, but that smile was starting to make her melt a little every time she saw it.

"You're the one who talked to me about how to move on, that's all. I thought you might think I was doing it wrong."

Poe's smile deepened. "Yeah, see, that's good advice for both of us, but it's a hard thing to do perfectly. It's really hard for me, too. If I knew how to completely move on from Finn... I don't know, maybe I wouldn't be here, and maybe I wouldn't have wound up kissing you after a mission in the first place."

"It felt good. I really liked last night." She chewed her lip. "It just feels weird, too."

"That can happen sometimes, when things are new. They feel good and bad at the same time."

"There isn't really any bad." She frowned. "It's more... it seems unfair that I'm so happy and he's still..." she waved her free hand at Finn's face.

"Yeah, it's not fair. Lots of things aren't fair." Poe let out a hard, short breath, and took a long look at Finn. His free hand was gripping the edge of the bed, pressing hard and then relaxing over and over. He did that when he was thinking, Rey had noticed. He was always doing something with his hands.

Eventually, Poe rubbed at his face, as if he'd fallen into a trance while looking at Finn and was trying to break out of it.

"Here's the thing," Poe said. "It does feel weird. Finn's had such a hard time - I hate to think of what life was like for him as a stormtrooper, and it was so hard for him to turn against them and rescue me. He's risked everything. And even aside from that, he's just..."

He waved a hand in the air like words had failed him.

"He's just so lovely?"

"Yes, that's it." Poe dropped his hand again. "So yeah, I want Finn to be happy. He deserves to be happy. It makes me feel weird that I get to be so..." He stopped, suddenly, and looked up at Rey with a flush to his cheeks. "That I get to have this thing, with you, that I never even thought I could have, and it's been such a gift."

This was another feeling Rey had never had before - the warmth of realising she could make Poe look like that.

"But the thing is, as much as we want Finn to be happy - he wants that for you too, you know? I think if he were awake, he'd be really happy that we're happy. Don't you?"

Rey nodded. "I just don't want to forget him. I don't want to leave him behind."

"We're both here with him now," Poe said. And there, that was it. That was the tricky thing, to keep from putting her life on hold just in case Finn came back, without forgetting about him either.

She reached out across the bedspread, laying her free arm on Finn's stomach. Without a word, Poe reached over from the other side and took her hand. This was how they could make it feel right. Not waiting for Finn, but not leaving him behind, either.

  


Rey's life had changed a lot since she left Jakku. Poe's life had changed a bit since he left the Republic army, and since Finn came into his life. But this new relationship between them, whatever it was, changed surprisingly little.

They got up in the morning, they ate, and they flew in more and more skirmishes against First Order battalions. Then they fell into bed exhausted at the end of the day, sometimes to a long sleep and sometimes to the harsh intrusion of nightmares. The only difference was that now, more often than not, they went to bed and woke up together.

Rey practiced with her lightsaber every day, less and less certain that it was doing her any good. She worked on her focus, reached out to the Force and pulled it in and around everything near her. She still sometimes had distractions, with thoughts of Poe or Finn coming to her when her mind got too still, but that wasn't new. She watched her footwork, and levitated BB-8 around her, and tried to feel which way the Force was moving today. She hoped she was doing it right, but she never knew whether it was enough.

Poe flew out on scouting missions more and more often, his squadron scattering throughout the galaxy to chase down whatever trailing remnants of the First Order they could find. It was dangerous work, and every time he left, Rey would search through the Force, trying to follow the sense of him to know that he was okay. Sometimes she could keep touch with his mind all the way out and back again. Most of the time, she couldn't. On the days when she got deepest into her mind, when she sunk so completely into the Force that she could feel it washing around her, she could always feel Finn. But Poe was harder to track, and she didn't know why. Maybe it was something like what the old masters told Luke, about how attachment could cloud your senses and divide you from the Force. Maybe it was just that she didn't know Poe so well, yet.

He knew how much Rey worried every time he flew out on another solo scouting trip. Sometimes Rey was there to see him off, her face blank and stoic as she watched him fly away. Sometimes she was busy, or sometimes she didn't come. She worried, but she never said anything, not to ask him to stay, not even to beg him to be careful as she had on their first night together.

He came back triumphant, having bested three TIE fighters singlehandedly, leaving their smoking rubble floating forever in the vacuum around Distaff III. He returned wide-eyed but silent, his X-wing covered in scorch marks, and headed straight for the bar, or for Rey, or for his own bed, alone, where he could sleep it off. He came back quiet and serious but thrumming with excitement, because he'd found a good lead and they could embark on a strong attack this time, strike a devastating blow with all the power they could muster.

He always came back.

Things were like they had been before, except they had sex sometimes. They'd come back from flying in battle still keyed up and fucked to work off the rest of the adrenaline, or they'd do it carefully and tenderly before someone left on a mission. Except it wasn't just like that, because they sought each other out all the time. They both found themselves looking for each other in a crowd, or gravitating to each other in meetings as they listened to the Admiral outline the next attack plan. They were together as much as they could be.

Neither of them spent their every spare moment with Finn any more. They didn't have enough spare time, and some of it they spent together on their own, naked and grunting and gasping like it was the last chance they'd ever have to fuck. But they still went to see him; they didn't plan it, but they usually ended up there at the same time. They knew when it had been too long, and when it was time to go.

They'd stopped talking about whether Finn was ever going to wake up.

  


It started as a routine morning meeting. They talked about the recent intel, the last few attacks they'd made, how well they'd defended a skirmish in neutral territory yesterday. It was all thrown out the window with a radio transmission from Kare Kun.

"I've recovered information on Kylo Ren's movements. He's embarking on a new targeted mission. He's heading for New Alderaan."

In an instant, all eyes turned towards the General. She stood like she was made of stone - leaning forward, gripping the centre table, still just as intent on listening to Kare's words as she had been only a moment ago.

"Are you heading there now, Kun?"

"Yes, General," she replied, instantly.

"Good. We'll send reinforcements soon. Your quick action and your bravery may have saved a nation tonight. Well done. Head to Alderaan, but make no further moves until reinforcements arrive until absolutely necessary."

"Yes, General," Kare said, and then the transmission cut out for good.

The meeting room immediately rose into a rumble of noise as every person there reacted. Throughout it, the General stood like a stone in a river, staring intently as if Kare was still talking and she couldn't miss a word. Poe sidled over to reach out to her.

"Are you okay, General?"

"I will be fine," she said, thoughtfully, which wasn't really an answer to the question. "Right now, we need to take action."

The room didn't fall completely silent when she started talking, but it did drop to a respectful murmur. The General issued commands quickly and simply. Three squadrons to head to New Alderaan immediately, along with the Millennium Falcon. The Echo of Hope to leave too, carrying as many soldiers trained in hand to hand combat as they could fit. Rey felt queasy at the thought of fighting alongside other foot soldiers, who had no Force training and no lightsabers and would struggle to even survive an encounter with Ren.

There wasn't much time, but the General called Rey and Poe into her office after the meeting anyway. Rey was impatient, itching to leave, but Poe's hand on her forearm stilled her. The General didn't waste time. As soon as the door was closed behind them, the General crossed her arms and regarded them both without even sitting down.

"I'll make this quick. I want to send you on cover for this mission, Poe. You've performed well on these kids of jobs before. And Rey, I'm sending you because if we need someone to take Ben in hand to hand combat, you're the only one I think I can rely on."

"Then why are you sending others? I don't know if they can take him, and I don't want to leave other people open to him, they could all be killed..."

The General cut her off with just a hand held in the air. "Rey, I understand your concerns, but I need you to trust me on this. I'm not going to discuss it any further. Can you accept that?"

Rey just nodded, meekly. The General turned her attention to Poe. "I want you running cover, because you're experienced. You understand that you can't pull any of the things you did on D'Qar."

"Yes, ma'am."

She rolled her eyes. "Not the time to 'ma'am' me, Poe."

"Sorry, it slipped out."

She nodded. "I trust you both, but I need to be sure you both understand the risk and importance of this mission. It's going to be risky for both of you. If one of you gets the order to leave the other one behind, you do it."

Rey looked troubled. Poe, on the other hand, was ready protest. "General, I've been flying X Wings for fifteen years! I've got an excellent record..."

"Yes, but I know you can get reckless, and I haven't worked under my command while you were sleeping with one of your comrades before."

Now their reactions were reversed; Rey placid, and Poe troubled.

"We haven't broken any rules," he said, stiffly.

"Of course not. Any rule you'd be breaking isn't one I could hold without being a hypocrite," she said, dryly. "I just brought you here to impress upon you, strongly, that regardless of how you feel about each other, you keep to the mission. No daring rescue ventures, no showy stunts, nothing. You stick to the mission."

"Yes, General," Poe agreed, reluctantly.

"Rey?"

She swallowed. She'd already lost Finn. She'd almost lost Poe once. She wasn't sure that she _could_ turn away if Poe needed help.

"You're not alone," the General said. She was firm, but her smile was kind. "It's one of the hardest things, following orders to turn away when you want to save someone you love. But you're so important to all of us, Rey. No matter what happens, the Resistance will be here to take care of you. I'll be here."

The General's eyes met Poe's, then, and he gave her a stiff nod. It was all happening too fast for Rey; she still didn't know whether she could do what the General was asking her. But she couldn't stay away, either, not when she had another chance to get Kylo Ren. So she nodded, not trusting herself to speak. The General took her by the shoulders, briefly, and gave her a steadying squeeze, a quick, comforting blessing.

"Good. Now get your butts in the air. We haven't got long."

  
  


They had time to talk. More than last time. Less than they would have thought.

"I imagined this a lot of different ways," Poe said. He paused while lifting the box of explosives onto the Falcon.

Rey didn't take her eyes off the dashboard where she was running through all the pre-flight checks. "I imagined it one way. A fight to the death."

Poe laughed, in spite of himself, and Rey shot him a look.

"I'm sorry, I know you're serious," he said, and gently tugged her towards him. She was still frowning but she followed easily, their bodies fitting together in a way that was becoming familiar. "You just sound so dramatic."

"I should be dramatic."

"Ben would definitely think that was fitting, but you can't try to outdo him at drama. You'll never win."

Rey laughed, softly, and rested her head on his shoulder. "I'm going to kill him, I swear. I don't care if the General wants him alive, I'm going to kill him."

It was unfair Poe thought, that Rey was still so young and had to think about killing, already training to fight this man to the death. The Jedi used to train people as soon as they could walk, he'd heard, but surely that was different; there were more of them, then, and nobody expected an apprentice to to and fight the leader of an evil cult on her own. Jedi were raised all their lives with people who could guide them, not left alone on a desert planet to fend for themselves.

But that was then, and this was now, and Rey was young and hardened by a world that had left her alone for so long, and she wasn't here to change minds. She didn't hesitate. She was ready to kill. It was a crime that she grew up so hard, but it made her into the person Poe loved right now.

Oh.

"I love you," he said.

Rey lifted her head from Poe's shoulder, her brows furrowed. "Because I want to kill Kylo Ren?"

Poe blinked. "Oh, sorry. I was thinking. I believe in you and I think you should kill him. I don't think he's someone you save. No, I just meant I love you because I do."

"Oh, okay then." She smiled in that way that made her nose wrinkle a little and made Poe melt inside. "Yeah, I guess I love you too."

Rey kissed him, so hard it made him dizzy. In all his years of flying, he'd never felt as wild as Rey made him feel like this. Not at the Academy when he was sneaking into place he shouldn't be with Di. Not even the last time he saw Finn conscious, when they were both about to launch themselves into a fight they might not survive. Despite the rollercoaster of their couple of days together, Finn made him feel safe. Rey made him feel like he'd left his parachute behind and he was flying straight into the fire anyway.

  
  


Rey didn't kill Kylo Ren on new Alderaan. This wouldn't be their last fight. That would take place many years later, on a very different world. When she met him on the steps of the palace of New Alderaan, it was be only the second of many more fights to come. She didn't kill Kylo Ren that day, but she tried.

There were no signs of First Order incursion on New Alderaan when they arrived, so most of their forces landed in the forests and mountains outside the city, hiding their ships as best they could and walking in on foot. They were strung out throughout the city, alert to any sign of an incursion. When they got a message from Poe, high on a nearby mountain keeping watch, that there was a single dark-hued ship approaching, they rallied on the palace steps.

"I don't know about this," Rey muttered, standing in front of a phalanx of Resistance footsoldiers who she hadn't known for long enough to trust. "There's so much more of this city he could take before he gets to us."

"The General wants you there. She thinks that's where he's going to strike, and I think she knows what she's doing. After all, she knows him better than any of us do."

Before Poe's warning signal, the streets of the capital had been full of people out and enjoying their business on a pleasant summer morning. As Kylo Ren approached, he did so through deserted streets. Rey could feel his agitation before she could see him. She felt his frustration and his rage, and felt the ripple of the Force as he blasted a fruit cart to smithereens without a human to vent his rage on. At last he reached the stairs and made his way up until he stood just a few steps below Rey.

"You can't stop me," he said, his voice low and sonorous through the mask. "I will cut you down like trees in the forest, and crush your men like grass under my feet."

"They're not all men," Rey snipped. "And you'll do no such thing."

"So much confidence for one who has barely learned a thing," he sneered, and before she could make another response, his lightsaber sprang to blazing life and he lunged for her.

Rey didn't have time to clear her mind, she didn't have time to meditate, she didn't have time to reach out and find the Force. All this time since they'd last fought, with Luke and then without Luke, she'd tried to be better at finding that focus. It still took her many long minutes to find the Force on most days, and some training sessions she couldn't get there at all. But fear and battle were great motivators, and this time, at least, it took no effort at all. As soon as he lunged, her body was already striking a new pose, moved by a force greater than her own decision making. The Force was with her as soon as he attacked.

Stab. Block. Attack. Parry. Attack. Drive him down the stairs. No time to watch your footwork on these perilous steps, just trust the Force to guide your feet and your instincts to make sure you land. Slash. Defend. Attack.

Sparring with Luke had been nothing like this. Luke had fought with passion, to her surprise, but he had confidence and control. Kylo Ren attacked wildly and without reserve. There were no tricks up his sleeve. He flew at her each time with his chest heaving and all his strength behind each blow, and all that energy spent each time she dodged and weaved and kicked him aside. He reached out with his mind to rip stones from the streets, from the palace walls, to hurl them at her. She ducked and weaved and found herself curled into a ball and rolling a few metres down the stairs to escape, but at least she knew she had the better of him. He was already throwing everything he could at her.

"You've been learning."

He came down the steps in a leisurely stroll as she clambered to her feet and lunged at him again. He sidestepped too easily, deflected her blow, and lunged at her in return. She tried to jump back, but this time trying to dodge backwards and up the stairs got the better of her, and she stumbled, falling on her back on the incline. It was fear, and not the Force, that propelled her back on her feet in under a second, before he could get the tip of his saber anywhere near her throat.

"You've been learning, but not enough. Old Skywalker doesn't know a thing that can help you, not compared to what you could learn from my master."

His calm belied the frantic way he fought. This wasn't the fight that Rey had expected. There was no rage here, not like the last time they clashed; this was a Kylo Ren who knew what he had come for, and accepted nothing less.

"Boring," Rey spat. "I didn't come here to learn. I came to kill you."

Those words were a harsher blow than she'd expected. Ren's back stiffened and his saber dropped to his side, almost as if he'd forgotten it was there. She couldn't see an expression through the eyes of that pitch-black helmet, but she hoped that maybe they looked like defeat.

"If it's a fight to the death you want," he snarled, "Then that's what you can get."

Rey had learned so much in so little time. She'd learned about more of the galaxy and its variety than she could have imagined before. She'd learned Poe and Finn and acceptance that you won't always get the endings you want, and you sometimes had to take what was right in front of you instead. She had learned, haltingly and imperfectly, to make herself a vessel of the Force. But she hadn't spent nearly as much time as her enemy at that last lesson. She had worked hard, and practiced every moment she could, and as their duel wore on she realised, with horror, that he was indeed starting to get the upper hand.

He came for her, again and again, no matter how many times or how deftly she dodged. He attacked and attacked and attacked until there was no ground left for her to give, until he'd driven her back at the feet of the other Resistance soldiers at the top of the stairs. She had the higher ground, but she was beginning to falter, and even the Force wasn't enough to keep her blocking perfectly, blow after blow. She had the higher ground, but he was the one gaining on her, and at her back was the target she desperately wanted to protect.

When she fell to her knees at a break in the incline, she wasn't fast enough to stand up. She felt Ren's shadow falling over her, and with a panic she heard the chorus of shuffles and clicks that signalled the rest of the foot soldiers readying their weapons, aiming to fire.

"No!" She said, in a panic. "He'll kill you!"

No, Rey, said a voice in her mind, one she hadn't felt before. It's time to let someone else help.

Rey felt tears sting her eyes, and felt the hum of Kylo Ren's lightsaber as it passed by her body, far too close for comfort. She scrambled to her feet, fumbling for her own saber, which was switched off and lying beside her. It shot into its full burst of sky blue, but by the time she was up and ready to fight, even the Force couldn't save her now. He slashed, and she dodged, but not far enough to stop the blade from catching her leg, leaving a searing line of pain from her ankle to her calf.

Three things happened at once. The other Resistance soldiers rushed in front of her, guarding her. Rey felt a surge in the Force and suddenly Kylo was shoved backwards, falling, tumbling down the stairs. And an X-wing fighter whooshed overhead, letting loose a shattering blast of fire that tore up the stairs between Rey and the masked figure before he could even get to his feet.

"What..." she tried to stand, and fell, and got halfway up again. "What's happening?"

"There are a lot of people who want to protect you."

Rey whipped her head around, stumbled, regained her one-legged footing again. The palace doors had opened, and part of her was shrieking that they had to get them closed, it wasn't safe. But in the doorway, along with a woman who must be New Alderaan's queen, was General Leia Organa. And it couldn't be that dangerous, either, if it was what she wanted to happen.

"There are a lot of people who want to protect you, Rey," Leia said, smiling. "There's these soldiers. There's Poe covering you from the sky, just like I told him to. And there's me."

"What are you doing here?" she asked, her voice cracking. "You don't come on the ground for these missions. It's not safe."

Leia stepped beside her, put her shoulder under Rey's arm. It stunned Rey; it seemed too familiar for a General to someone who was officially only a Private despite her Jedi status. But as much as she hated the weakness, it felt good to have someone holding her up.

"I suppose you may not know my history, Rey. My coming here had to be a secret, even from you. But there was no way I could hear of my son attacking New Alderaan and not come here to defend it myself."

A bloody, furious scream came from below them, followed by more gunfire from Poe, followed by another scream. Rey lifted her head to see Ren climbing again, shaken but radiating more fury than ever. Rey made a move towards him and hissed when Leia held her back.

"Let me kill him," she growled. "I came here to kill him."

"Not today." The General's hand on her shoulder was light, barely a weight at all, but it held Rey in place as if it were a set of iron shackles. "I don't want to see you killed."

"But..." Tears stung her eyes. "I swore. I swore I'd get him today."

"Not today."

"Weak," Kylo Ren sneered. He'd reached the line of soldiers in front of them now, and glared at Rey and Leia over their heads as if they weren't ther. "Pathetic. You keep sparing me, thinking I'll be grateful and I'll come back home. You can't bring yourself to kill me, and that's why you'll always fail!"

His voice had risen to a shriek by the end of the speech. Rey was trembling with the urge to attack again; the thirst for blood was all her own, she realised now, and the Force had left her, and she did not care. But Leia held her back and stared him down, impassive.

"No, I will not," Leia said, coolly, as Kylo advanced. "I don't care whether you live or not. But I've lost too much to you already to let this girl throw herself at your mercy in the name of vengeance. You've killed enough people I love."

With a flick of her hand, the Resistance ground crew shouldered their weapons, the blasters ready to fire.

"You can't," Rey gasped, to Leia. "You can't let them. They're no match for him. They'll all die."

"Our soldiers aren't the only ones here to defend the palace," Leia murmured. "Alderaan won't be taken again."

Rey could see them, then, all the men and women and others in Alderaanian livery, who had been calmly, slowly trickling out of the doors behind her to take their places in the ranks behind them, in the palace windows, and even some on the ground below. All of them with blasters, all aimed at Ren.

"You might be able to deflect blows from a hundred blasters," Leia said, coolly, "But there'll be a hundred more after that, and then a hundred more. And you've left your rear open; there's a city behind you that's ready to see you dead, too. Not to mention our friend in the sky."

Poe was circling again, swooping closer every time he passed over the palace stairs.

"You wouldn't," Kylo snarled, but he didn't seem so sure this time. "You'll never be able to let go of this foolish idea that I'm your son and you can tame me."

"Wouldn't I?"

Leia didn't say any more. She just raised her eyebrow, and Rey could see Kylo begin to tremble. He started to turn and run just as she gave the word and all the gathered soldiers opened fire.

Kylo Ren vanished instantly, in a cloud of rock dust lit up by flashes of burning red light. The air was thick with the smells of burning stone and ozone from the blaster fire. Rey shielded her eyes, her mouth; the dust was nothing new for someone raised in the desert, but she wished she had her mask.

Some of the blaster shots did deflect back, but there were many, many more that didn't. Some soldiers fell; most stayed standing. When they stopped getting deflected blaster fire shooting back out of the centre of their fire, Leia gave the signal to stop. It gradually made its way around the ranks of soldiers until they all lowered their weapons. Silence fell. The dust settled. Kylo Ren was nowhere to be seen.

"He's not dead," said Rey, dully. "He got away."

"Yes, I thought he might," Leia agreed. Her voice gave no indication of whether she thought that was a relief or a disappointment to her.

"Rey, we need to get you home soon, but I want to introduce you to someone," Leia said. She gestured, and the blonde woman behind her stepped forward. "This is my old friend, queen Evaan of New Alderaan."

Rey didn't often feel embarrassed about being filthy, not after being coated with sand for her entire childhood, but she felt entirely too much of a mess to be speaking to a queen. "Pleased to meet you," she said, meekly. And then, "Sorry about your stairs."

The queen laughed, a deep, throaty laugh. "I wouldn't worry about that," she said, with a smile. "It could have been a lot worse."

  


"I'm not going."

"You really should, though."

"I don't care, I'm not," Rey said, stubbornly, hobbling back to her bunk and holding onto Poe in a death grip beside her. "I'm not going anywhere."

"Okay. I'm just saying, if you can't walk your way back without leaning on me, maybe that's a sign that you need medical attention."

"I can walk," Rey grumbled. "I'm holding on to you because I like you."

"If you say so. If you're fine then I might leave you here, then, and join the party with the rest of Black Squadron."

"Don't you dare."

She grunted and stepped away from him as they approached her door, and she had to try to stand on her own two feet to punch in the code to get it open. Poe could have done it, he knew her code by now, but this didn't seem like the best time to point that out. At this point he'd be grateful if he could just get Rey to sit still long enough to dress the wound. He wasn't going to risk doing anything that might lead to her just telling him to fuck off.

"I guess we can leave it tonight," he said, dubiously, as he helped her inside. "It really can't wait any longer than tomorrow, though, or else it's going to get infected."

Then Rey was falling down onto the bed at the same time that she grabbed his jacket, and he fell hard on top of her. He didn't have time to check whether he'd hurt her before she was kissing him hard, pulling him close to her, until he carefully lay down on top of her and kissed her back.

"You can't possibly want to have sex right now," he groaned, when they broke apart. "You just fought an enormous battle. You have an open wound!"

"I don't think it counts as 'open' when lightsabers are self-cauterising."

"I... that's really not the point. Burns can definitely still get infected! A cloth bandage is not enough."

"We didn't have med bays on Jakku, you know. I know how to look after wounds. I dressed it myself on the way back."

"With what?"

"Isopropyl alcohol and clean sheets," she said, matter of factly. "It's never gone wrong for me before. I don't know what you're worried about."

Poe stroked gently at her face. "I'm worried about you for a lot of reasons. I thought maybe I'd lose you again today."

She kissed him, deeply, and when they pulled apart again she had a small smile on her face. "We knew that was a risk."

"Yeah, we did," he agreed. "It doesn't make it any easier."

There was a knock on the door. Rey shouted for them to fuck off. When the General's voice replied 'No, I don't think I will,' they hastily tried to make themselves look halfway decent. Rey sat up and tried to rearrange her wraps as if she hadn't just been halfway to ripping them off, and Poe straightened his jacket and hitched his pants up before he got up to open the door.

"Sorry, General," he said, with his most charming smile. "We didn't mean to be rude."

"We can all have hot tempers after battle," she replied. "I understand. But you need to come to the med bay, now."

"I'm not going to med bay!" Rey groaned. "I've been dressing my own wounds since I was five! Why doesn't anyone believe me?"

"I believe you. I just thought you might like to know that Finn is awake."

**Author's Note:**

> There are a lot of stories I've wanted to write since TFA came out; this is just the only one that I wanted to get done before TLJ comes out and josses it all. I'm trying to post it all before the big release date next week, but I may not get through all the edits by then. Thank you for reading, anyway.


End file.
